Snapshots of Life

“Fold your hands, bow your head, close your eyes and we’ll pray”. That was the way I was being taught to pray from the time my little 5 years old feet first stepped into Sunday school. There’s nothing wrong with praying with your eyes closed. But through the years, I felt something is missing in my prayer life – my spiritual life. Somehow I was being conditioned to think that spirituality is always formed in the closet of solitude with my eyes tide shut away from the distractions of the world. So I grew up unknowingly crippled in the art of seeing – contemplative seeing. My serendipitous discovery of photography has ‘opened my eyes’. God is everywhere, in everything, among everyone. We don’t need fancy digital cameras to take snapshots of life or to help us practice contemplative seeing. We just need to paused (Selah). In his book The Contemplative Pastor, author Eugene Peterson wrote in the closing of Chapter 7 “… and we find ourselves in the solid biblical companionship of psalmist and prophets who watched the “hills skipped like lambs” and heard the “trees clapped their hands,” alert to God everywhere, in everything, praising, praying with our eyes wide open…”