PJs and The Call [many questions, few answers]
It was Socrates who long ago observed that.“Contrast is the essence of inquiry.” How about the contrast of photographing kids in great need in a third world country one day and the next photographing cute kids, healthy fresh teens, and gracefully aging adults modeling pajamas, the most comfortable of all garments?
I am 54. I understand so little of what is so important. A Christian for 35 years yet an infant in the way of The Call.
What is The Call? Is it black & white; I either have it or I don’t? Is it a narrow path along which I walk, no steps to the left or right? What, if anything, has comfort, protection, or control have to do with The Call? Why if The Call is so self-absorbing do I allow other things so less significant to so absorb me?
Is there even such a thing as The Call? Have I really received it? Or am I perhaps just a foolish body stumbling forth carrying a weighty, arrogant presumption?
Even if God has called, can My Call make any difference? Or, does doing so even matter? Oh, the confusion of The Call to use documentary photography to help people look among the nations! observe! be astonished! and wonder! at all God is doing in the world (Hab. 1:5).
My life is bound ever so tightly by relentless fetters of time, 24 hours binding all of what I do, a finite beginning and end; fetters that bind my productivity. Or are these fetters but the stripes of yet another costume of self-deception barely clothing my drive for significance?
This contrast is too much, filling my mind with the deadly discomfort of days and days of “I just can’t answer these questions?” One day introducing people to the life and death, the eternal needs of needy people; the next luring the same folks into a complacent comfort lounging the day away clothed in cozy flannel and cool cotton. PJs and The Call?
I am 54. I understand so little of what is so important. A Christian for 35 years yet an infant in the way of The Call.
What is The Call? Is it black & white; I either have it or I don’t? Is it a narrow path along which I walk, no steps to the left or right? What, if anything, has comfort, protection, or control have to do with The Call? Why if The Call is so self-absorbing do I allow other things so less significant to so absorb me?
Is there even such a thing as The Call? Have I really received it? Or am I perhaps just a foolish body stumbling forth carrying a weighty, arrogant presumption?
Even if God has called, can My Call make any difference? Or, does doing so even matter? Oh, the confusion of The Call to use documentary photography to help people look among the nations! observe! be astonished! and wonder! at all God is doing in the world (Hab. 1:5).
My life is bound ever so tightly by relentless fetters of time, 24 hours binding all of what I do, a finite beginning and end; fetters that bind my productivity. Or are these fetters but the stripes of yet another costume of self-deception barely clothing my drive for significance?
This contrast is too much, filling my mind with the deadly discomfort of days and days of “I just can’t answer these questions?” One day introducing people to the life and death, the eternal needs of needy people; the next luring the same folks into a complacent comfort lounging the day away clothed in cozy flannel and cool cotton. PJs and The Call?
posted by Rick Albertson at 3:58 PM
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