An Empty Picture
Different strokes for different folks—so the ditty goes. Each generation has its defining characteristics. We usually acquire several calendars at the turning of a new year. Most of them have nice pictures, but all of them have some kind of picture.
How can a picture be worth a thousand words? I was sitting looking at a calendar with my Grandpa one day. We came across a summer month picture. I thought it was a nice enough picture—a large green pasture surrounded by a good fence. I didn't think any more about it. Before we turned to the next month's picture, he said something was off about that picture. I was somewhat surprised.
"Why's that?" I asked.
"There's nothing alive in it," he said.
I've thought about that picture and his statement many times over the last number of years. Nothing alive? I was forced to think about that. Our universe, and that pasture as well, is teeming with life. Granted, in some instances it is microscopic. If you had dug in the ground of that pasture you would have found it to be full of life of different kinds, but to the naked eye, he was correct. There was neither human, nor beast, nor fowl in that scene.
In this family we have a penchant for scenery photos. In many of those there is neither human, nor beast, nor fowl, but there is something that speaks out. Whether it is sun, moon, stars, clouds, sky—something that touches a place in our soul with its colors and beauty—something that is alive. Alive without being alive.
That leads me to contemplate what is life, and what is alive? I can sit on my deck and see none of the things we would think of as living, yet I hear life all around me. From the locusts calling, the cattle lowing, chickens, or turkeys clucking or gobbling, all indicate life. In the early morning I might not hear any of that, however, I can even close my eyes and feel life.
The pasture picture might have spoken to the photographer, but my Grandpa was right. There wasn't anything alive in it. There wasn't anything that spoke of life, or that spoke to the heart.
Psalm 46:10 "Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. 11) Jehovah of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah."
