Most of you know that I am not the most observant person. It takes a lot for me to notice things, that is unless I have a camera in my hand. Give me a camera and I notice everything! I see things differently. I notice both fine detail and collective beauty. Maybe that’s why I love photography so much? When life becomes so blindingly distracting, I take great pleasure in seeing what other people walk by. I love seeing surprising vignettes of beauty, particularly when they are surrounded by ugliness.
Of course, there is nothing special about me. I think we all have these two modes in our lives. There’s a lot we ignore, overlook, push aside, and hide. And, there are some things we become enamored of or fixated on. Some things we just can’t see and some things we can’t not see. We filter life for the sake of the hope of self-preservation or for the comfort of self-delusion or the pursuit of self-interest. We all do it as a normal course of living, that is, until something shocks us and forces us to reboot.
One of the things I hate with a passion is having someone stand behind me and look over my shoulder. This is the case whether the person is the love of my life or a total stranger. They could be coming in for a kiss or the kill—it doesn’t matter because it pretty much affects me the same way and I pretty much react the same way.
It isn’t something that I admire about myself. It isn’t something I even fully understand. I think it goes to a much more basic and primordial level than I am able to access. Perhaps it is a protective instinct that God gave us so that we know when an enemy is creeping up on us? Maybe it has something to do with being a preacher and living next to an elder when I first entered the ministry? Maybe it is something to do with having three sons and only one computer for the majority of their lives growing up? Maybe this is just one of those areas in which I am able to exercise my unvarnished jerkiness? Because, believe me, I can be a big jerk if you stand behind me for any length of time!
What would it be like to look over God’s shoulder and watch Him work? Would you be able to follow the billions of things that He is able to juggle all at once? I don’t think so! Would you want to point to out a few things you would like Him to do differently, or faster? Probably! After all, that is part of the jerkiness of the human heart (Yes the word of the day is ‘jerkiness,’ but you may not want to use it in a sentence too often today!).
What do faith and cinnamon rolls have in common? Well, if ‘life is like a box of chocolates’ why can’t faith be like a plate cinnamon rolls? Am I deep or what?
We were in Jerome Arizona. Jerome is a great town up in the mountains of Arizona. From all accounts it was once a rip-snorting, rough and ready mining town in the 1800’s, but eventually it became pretty much an empty ghost town until the 1960’s. It was then that the flower children discovered it. They soon moved in or ‘squatted,’ depending on your perspective, and started living in Jerome. Of course, as soon as the town started to fill up, those who had abandoned it remembered that they owned it, and they decided it was time to start charging rent or expecting buy-outs.
Well, to make a long story short, the creativity and the optimism of the 1960’s won out as the new residents started up small business to pay the bills and tourism went through the roof. Many of those hippies still live there and Jerome is now the third largest tourist attraction in Arizona—after the Grand Canyon and Sedona. I love this story because it has the feel of frontier risk and opportunity. But, more than that, to take something lost and give it a second chance is downright Christian, is it not? Christ is all about taking that which is lost and giving it new life, but I digress.
While we were there, we had to do the most essential thing any traveller has to do—no, not that! Remember that I am from Canada and the most essential thing for Canadian travellers is that we find GOOD coffee. We went to a place that my buddy Rick knew of, but alas it was closed. I almost started to panic, but the high altitude and lack of caffeine made panicking too difficult. Thankfully, next door and down a few steps was this little shop that you could easily walk by without noticing. This harbinger of delight is called “Gisel’s Café and Bakery.”
“Can I have a do-over?” People usually ask that question because they’ve made a mistake of some sort, but sometimes God gives us do-overs because we did everything right!