Am I the only one who does this?
Or is it just a byproduct of a little too much time spent behind a camera lens?
People keep asking me why I am deep in thought in the middle of a driveway, or why I have a habit of walking with my head pointed up instead of where I am going.
I find myself staring at things. Not just staring into nothing, and not staring at anything important, but starting at things as if, by force of will, I might bore out some great truth or deep meaning with my eyes. Some deeper truth that lies just under the surface, like the vitamins under an orange’s skin.
This morning I was at “the red C” (a large letter “C” painted on the drive at college, outside the guys dorm. Guys are Israelites & girls are Egyptians… they are not allowed to cross the red sea) waiting for a friend to pick something up and I caught myself just staring. The corrugations on the roof of the married quarters, uniform in shape but varied in colour as the cloud-shrowded sun struggled down onto it. I looked at the little ventilation pipe that stuck out like a lollipop from a kids mouth. Focus shifted from the roof infront to the palms behind. Berries and stalks, bright yellow against the green leaves and brown trunk.
The asphalt of the tennis court, cut into mosaic by the wire fence. The billowing bingham of the table cloths drying on the line. The clouds above, rolling and roiling, pregnant with rain.
None of it was particularly begging to be photographed. I suspect they would stay under single figures for the number of views if I put it up on my Flickr account, yet I felt that if I stared long enough or thought hard enough (but about what?) i’d find the truth. I’d have the answer.
As I thought about everything this afternoon, I realised my problem..
Psalm 19 says
“The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they display knowledge.”
Maybe there is some kind of hidden beauty that is attached to all the little things in life. Maybe they possess qualities that we fail to see, because we fail to look hard enough. However, in the end, the greatest beauty lies in a creater who has made these things for us to appreciate. No matter how much beauty we find in the created order, it can only ever be a shadow of the creator Himself.
I don’t think I’m going to stop my staring. I don’t think we spend enough time really appreciating the little things in this world. That said, I think the focus might change. I’ll take a leaf out of the Narnia series.
Time to look further onward and further upward!