Yesterday I was sitting on the recliner, reading, when I
heard one of my cats, Little Girl, jump down from the bed in the other
room. A second later, she appeared and
seemed headed to the kitchen and her food dish.
“Little Girl,” I called to her. “Wanna come up?”
She stopped and looked at me. Food or my lap?
Normally, it wouldn’t be a contest, but I knew that when I
was on the recliner, my lap was Little Girl’s most favorite place in the world.
Little Girl glanced over at the kitchen and then back to me.
“Wanna come up?” I asked her again.
She turned away and headed for the kitchen.
I didn’t take it personally.
She chose food over me. I got
it. Priorities. Also, she’s a cat. It was a win that she even stopped to think
about it.
And how many times had I prioritized something—like sleep—over
the cats who have, on especially cold nights, staged a wrestling match on top
of me as they vie for my warm lap.
“All right, both of you get off!” I yell at them.
Every decision we make over the course of day involves
prioritizing one thing over the other.
The cats have simple decisions—food, play, sleep, potty.
Although now that I think about it, it’s not that my
decisions are so much more complicated, there just seem to be so many little
things throughout the day that require my attention.
Even something as simple as taking a picture.
I have taken literally thousands of pictures of White Pelicans
for instance. It got to a point recently
that even though I drove out to the pond to watch them every morning, I didn’t
bother taking out my camera. What new
picture could they offer me? Pelican in
flight, check. Pelican feeding on fish,
check. Pelican bullying cormorant,
check. Pelican parade, check. Pelican feeding frenzy, check, check, check.
When I was at church this afternoon, taking a tiny little
walk, after having felt so sick the last four or five days, I took my camera
out because you never know when a bobcat is just going to suddenly show or
something else crazy.
But what did I wind up taking a picture of today?
The Mary statue by the Memorial Garden, a statue I have
taken a picture of hundreds of times.
This was, after all, the same Mary statue that I
photographed on her back, a temporary casualty of Hurricane Irma months ago.
What made her so special today?
It was mid-afternoon.
I normally see her in the morning.
The way the sun was hitting her this afternoon, the way the shadows fell
across her cheek—it was something different that I didn’t have a picture of
yet.
There is a calmness and a peace and a sense of purpose when
I take a picture like that—when I see something otherwise ordinary in suddenly
a new, and in this case, literal, new light.
All photographers, in a way, are historians. Every time you take a picture of anything, a
birthday party, an abandoned car on the side of the road, an Osprey tearing
through a fish, you are recording that moment in time and that exact moment
will never come again. There will never
be another moment like it. It is special
and unique, always and forever.
If we value things based on their uniqueness, then consider
this:
Every moment of every day is special.
Every moment will only come once and never again.
Everything … from the way the front door sticks sometimes
when you turn the key … from the cat, sitting on the bench, pretending to
sleep, but watching you will one eye open just in case you stop by to pet it …
to the earthworm on the sidewalk fleeing the early morning broken-sprinkler-head
deluge.
Everything is worthy of attention.
Everything.
This is seeing the world through the eyes of God.
This is His world.
Everything is captivating.
Everything is beautiful. Everything
is important.
He watches us, like I watched Little Girl yesterday, walk on
by. He watches us make choices and He
doesn’t judge. He simply waits as I
waited for Little Girl.
After she finished eating yesterday, she came back to me and
jumped up on my lap, unprompted.
God waits for us, too, to come to Him for the things we are truly
starving for.
There is so much in this world to see. We’re going to miss some of it. But God has faith in us. He knows we will always come back.
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