Friday, April 26, 2013

One Four Three

At the end of the day as I’m unwinding, I look through my gallery at the pictures I have taken throughout the day.

There’s the taco I had for lunch…

There are the pretty flowers I got…

There’s the funny bumper sticker I saw on Walnut Grove…

There’s the…

My eyes studied the next images on my phone.  Unlike the others, these I did not recognize.  And there was no reason I should have. 

Two pictures had been taken two hours after I had fallen asleep the night before.


I have no memory of waking up in the middle of the night to take these.  The work it would’ve taken to take these should have woken me up.  I would have had to be conscious enough to notice the time, to unplug my phone from the short-corded charger to be able to take the picture, to unlock my phone, to tap my camera icon, and take two pictures, one normal and one zoomed, all to replug my phone back into its charger.  Why couldn’t I remember any of it?

As I dissected the events that would have had to occur for these pictures to exist, more important than the “How where these pictures taken?” was the “Why?”

Why were these pictures taken?

Over the last month or so, I’ve turned away from God.  In anger.  From hurt.  Disappointed.

You don’t love me, I’ve said.

And I’ve repeated it like a selfish child.

You don’t love me.

You don’t love me.

You don’t love me.

Seeing this—feeling God’s sneaky hand all over it—was like hearing Him say, “Oh yeah?  You don’t love me?  Well, I love you.  I still love you.”

I’ve had a few special moments like this where God surprises me, reminding me of just Who He is and how much He loves me and how He knows me enough to be able to show me in my own Jamie way in my own Jamie time that would take my Jamie breath away.

God loves us and isn’t slow to show us.  For you, it could be a free coffee, or a beautiful tree, or a song on the radio.  For me, very simply, it was the unconscious clicking of a camera phone at 1:43 in the morning.

Reassuring is it that when we’re at our lowest, even if our heart has changed toward God that He is still God, ever constant, and He still loves us, and He wants us to know.