Photography, Time And Eternity

2 Corinthians 6:2

‘I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.’

At home I have, in a box, a photograph I took around forty years ago. It shows a young girl running along a wall, both feet off the ground. Although she’s running quite fast, the picture is pin-sharp – an exposure of one five-hundredth of a second. I’ve always been fascinated by the way in which a photograph seems to take a slice out of time - by the time the shutter had closed, that instant where Kirsty’s life and mine intersected was already in the past, fixed and unchangeable. I also have a small collection of nineteenth-century photographic portraits. People unknown to me and long dead, but at that one past moment alive, present, composing their features for the photographer with his wooden camera.

Time is deeply mysterious. The theory of relativity tells us that it is somehow flexible, that it depends on where you are and how fast you are moving, but in our own personal experience time simply flows past us – in the words of the old hymn ‘Time, like an ever-flowing stream, bears all its sons (and daughters) away.’ We each of us live in that ever-moving moment, between an unchangeable past and an unknown future, that we call the present – which by the time you have said the word is already the past!

So if the present moment is the only place where I exist, it’s also the only place where I can encounter God. He is of course present to all time. I may have had great experience of him in my past; I may anticipate or hope for more great encounters in the future. But now is the time to speak with him, to listen to him. It’s the only place I’ve got!

Prayer – Lord, I’ve got plans for the future and memories of the past, but don’t let me spend my life living there. Help me to live, with you, in the ever-precious present!