Last week, Brandi and I, were blessed along with several of our missionary friends to attend a photography school. Our family has always enjoyed photography so we were excited to be able to learn the ins and outs of how to take a great photo. This class would be different though. This class would be designed with missionaries in mind … a ‘photography in ministry’ kind of thing. Twenty-four hours of instruction in two days created especially to help us, as workers in the Kingdom, share our hearts for the Estonians through pictures. Reporting is so important when you are being supported on a foreign field but we wanted something more than that. We wanted to learn how to be story-tellers.
We learned all about our cameras, lenses, and inner parts. We learned how to set our aperture and shutter speeds, and read our light meters. We learned about focus, composition, rule-of-thirds, depth-of-field, stopping motion, contrasting, and directional space. We were taught enough technical skills to leave me fully aware that I had a very long way to go before I would truly be able to create a ‘prizewinning’ photo. I left there with more than a new knowledge of the technique of photography though … I left with a clearer understanding of myself and a new challenge to view things from a different perspective in the future.
We were in our session about Photo Journalism. In an attempt to teach us about the emotional impact of a photo and to help us understand how people respond to certain photos in certain ways, Will flashed several images on the screen ahead. As each one passed, he asked us to tell him what we saw. It’s interesting how a room full of people can look at the same thing and see totally different things.
Mary’s eyes teared up when we saw the photo of a little brown-skinned boy near a sea shore. We all saw a little boy looking out over an ocean at the horizon … but Mary didn’t. She saw her children’s two school friends being swallowed up by a tsunami while vacationing in Thailand. When she shared her heart, my perspective of the photo changed.
I used to look at a photo of the rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery and proudly think about all the men who died for our freedom. Now when I look at that photo, I see so much more. I see MY son who died for our freedom. I see countless mothers with broken hearts over the loss of THEIR sons. I see wives, children, families and friends … a whole circle of people affected with each marker erected.
Each photo shown was interpreted differently by those looking at them … differently because our perspective of what we saw was affected by our past experiences.
It made me start thinking how our view of life and its priorities are the same way. How we can all be looking at the same thing and yet see it so differently. Even how something you saw one way in the past (the same way as others did), can suddenly change by something that happens to you.
Will taught us that we need to look more closely at what we are seeing, not only when we take a picture but when we view it, as well. In essence, he challenged us to listen with our eyes. More importantly, I think, to listen with God’s eyes … the eyes of His heart.
If that is true of a photograph, then how much more is that true of the choices and actions of my life? And it’s now becoming more clear … the experiences that God has allowed in my life help me learn to listen better with my eyes. Not necessarily to lose the way I once saw things but to use those experiences to gain a better understanding … a new vision … God’s vision.
And as I stand beside those that bless my life with their presence … as I ‘view’ the picture of their lives … I need to listen carefully to what I see. I need to be willing to change my perspective, if needed, when they share their hearts. That’s what Jesus did! He showed kindness, compassion, and understanding to those who He encountered. He had not experienced the guilt of adultery or the pain of leprosy, yet when he saw the hurts of those who did, He tenderly ministered to them. He listened not with human eyes but with the loving eyes of His Father.
When Jesus wept over Lazarus’ death, I believe He did so out of compassion for Lazarus’ family not because he was sad he was gone. To Him, Lazarus was not gone. He knew that Lazarus already walked in Paradise … and He knew He was about to raise him from the dead. Yet, He did not try to talk them out of their grief. He did not tell them that time would heal their hurts. He did not upbraid them for their lack of faith or remind them that Lazarus was already in a ‘better place’. Because of His compassion and His understanding … because he could see through the eyes of God’s heart, He simply … wept.
I pray that God will help me see more clearly through His eyes and that because of my experience, I can listen better with my own eyes.
I pray that when compassion is needed and words are not ~ that I may simply … weep.
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