Monday, December 19, 2011

intentional death

I brought my camera intending to capture the night. Wanting desperately. Seeking silently. Ever watching for the moment when a small click in the corner would be appropriate. It never happened. I couldn't capture it. The raw emotion. The feeling.  It became apparent that I was to play a role in the night. A bystander that needed a fresh touch of the blood. Willingly covered. What I witnessed was death. or was it life? 


The best laid paths are the ones you build yourself right? Measuring so carefully that your steps and plans will be fulfilled. Until you find that when you look backwards it wasn't a very straight and narrow built path. Instead it's strewn about with wreckage and carnage of good intentions and destruction from the pit of hell.  Misspoken words, a heart that wasn't always looking for the good in others, actions that were far away from the life you wanted to lead. It's sin. All that stuff behind you is sin and lies and it needs to be covered in the blood that Jesus freely gave to save you. His death can give you life. A life that you will never experience unless you die. 

In that room, where people had done the hard work to examine the path that they had walked and were willingly, in front of others, dying to themselves was a feeling that I couldn't capture. Any image I would have taken would have been a substitute for the real thing.  Pornography. A cheapening of the real deal. I couldn't. I didn't want to lessen anything. Instead of looking through the lens as a bystander. I grasped onto it with the eyes of my heart realizing that none would ever "get it" until they sat in my chair, in that room, with a God so big who became so little to show us how to love each other, love ourselves, and love Him.  It was intimacy that I came to capture in my camera, but I captured it in my heart instead, a branding of Him. I had died to live, again. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I sobbed reading this because it was so intimate for me to share, and I knew the words I had written and shared did not begin to describe what is only spirit to spirit between me and my Lord. Thank you for entering into (where two or three are gathered) the intimacy that is beyond words... the holy of holies with our Saviour. We all celebrated in His joy and presence the passing from death to life... once for all at His cross and our daily identification with Him on that same cross. It was special that night and thank you for being so sensitive to Him that you knew that to try to "touch" it with physical hands on a camera would have been like touching the Ark of the Covenant. It was His holy and special work that night... not ours. ~Ken

kelly said...

You right Ken... to GOD be the glory! His touch can't be "touched". it has to be felt..and that means becoming vulnerable and weak. SO glad He worked a work!!