life image

So they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what is an image worth? It’s worth a lot more than words. A picture is one type of image, but what about everything else we see? We are bombarded with images in our media driven society. Turn on the tv, and you are seeing images being streamed in real time, or taped. Watch a movie and you are seeing thousands of images captured on film telling the story of an event. Look at a magazine or even a book that has images and you are seeing words that have been interpreted and transformed into a concrete form of representation. Then there is the Internet, a world of images at your fingertips. Even as I type this I am seeing an image of a page as it would appear if printed, or published to the web. I am seeing an image of my thoughts.

Whether or not we are conscious of it, images play a huge role in our lives. We have many associations with images that we have grown up with that we simply accept. Children identify with hundreds of images, one of top priority to them might be ‘golden arches’. We know what those mean, and what they stand for.

Lately I have become obsessed with images from around the world. These images inform me of the events in my country, as well as around the globe. I have become a news hound. A BBC junkie. I constantly find myself navigating the bookmarks list and clicking links to the major news websites. I am captivated by the images I see. They capture a moment in time. This two-dimensional representation of a place grants me the ability to vicariously enter their world. I know that this ‘flat’ image in actuality has a three-dimensional world behind it. I know that the people in the image are real, and that they are experiencing something that I can only infer from the composition of the image.

There is power behind these images. There is a voice trying to be heard. Can our lives be thought of as images? In the history of time are our lives but an image of a particular place in a particular time? What would the image of your life look like? If you went to the homepage of the ‘history of time’ website, and your life was the feature article what image would accompany it?

What is your voice trying to say? How are you composing the image of your life so that it communicates a powerful message? It makes me wonder if our all knowing, all seeing God views us that way.

There are many stories I know where this statement finds truth. Try to think of any famous historical figure… what image comes to mind? We associate lives with images. I like to imagine that for each of His children He has the most beautifully framed image of their life hanging on His wall. An image with a subject matter that captures their existence. For every single one of His children He has one of these, since the beginning of time. God has a lot of wall space.

But, He didn’t send us an appointment card with our portrait time on it, and He didn’t ask us to pose and smile when the image was taken, did He? No, He didn’t, and this is most likely the case because the image was taken when we least expected it. The image was taken when we were loving our neighbor and not thinking of ourselves. The image came when we were at out lowest and were most dependent on Him. The image came when we were hiding and didn’t want to be found. The image came when we realized for the first time that we are truly loved.

The wonderful thing about images is that there are an infinite number of them at any given moment in time. Not happy with the one that may have been taken already? Make today’s image count.

Where do these images originate, though? I know where they don’t originate. They don’t originate in indolence or indifference. They are born in the midst of action. They come from a desire to see change. They are the culmination of the person, the subject. Follow your heart, live your passions and convictions with integrity.

Remember, images are powerful tools.