I recently went back and watched the message Cass Langton brought at the start of the year Do you remember the title?
The question I’ve been asking myself and I am asking you now … What has been framing your year? Has it been the news reports? Or the copious amounts of 2020 memes that are floating around the web? (I admit they are pretty funny and I love having a laugh at them. Thank you Gabe Kelly for keeping me up to date!) Maybe it’s been framed with fear and anxiety? Or might it be that you have a story of God’s miraculous work in your life that’s framed 2020.
If I am being honest, my frame was looking blurry, I couldn’t see the framework, I couldn’t see the detail, I had no context, it just all seemed to blur together. Every day, week, month … A BLUR!!! Covid-19 hit. Life was tipped upside down. That work/home life balance seem to go out the window. Finding peace became impossible in the blur – that haze which, like a low-hanging cloud, kept me from seeing past the current week.
This was ironic cause I love photography; photography is all about what you focus on, framing a picture with the subject matter and telling a story. There is nothing quite like a well framed photo tells a story that makes my heart sing.
FOCUS
How are you focusing and what are you choosing to focus on? You’re looking done the lens of a camera, adjusting the dial to re-focus. Life might feel uncertain or overwhelming right not but God is in the midst of it all; he is in the picture. You just need to adjust the focus. When it comes to a good photo, the thing about focus is that not every detail within the image is in focus. It’s up to the Photographer to choose what is important between the foreground and background. Where is your focus? A new skill or hobby?
FRAMING
Framing can take a good photograph to an amazing photograph. It takes the photographer getting into the right position, establishing what is between lense and the subject/content. I think back to Sundays before we had to adjust how we gather. My Sunday was framed, positioning myself amongst my team, bumping in and out every week, making services happen and laying the foundation for people to meet Jesus. How was your Sunday framed? Maybe it was from behind the Front of House Audio Console, behind a microphone on stage, in a video control room. There were so many different positions that framed what we did and why we did it. Though the position may have change, the framing (the why) has not!!! You may be viewing Sunday from a different position (your lounge room) but our posture/the context has not changed.
STORY
The thing about story is that there is ALWAYS a story. Without focus and framing, the story is just a blur. I think of some of our INCREDIBLE photography team and the stories they have told through a well-focused and well-framed moment they captured. Your life is a story that continues being written this year; don’t let this part of it be a write off. There is a story God is outworking within you in 2020 that is beautiful, awe-inspiring, captivating – a story waiting to be told. I was reminded this morning reading Hebrews 6;
“God can’t break his word. And because his word cannot change, the promise is likewise unchangeable.” – Hebrews 6:17 (MSG)
My year may have started out a blur yet I find myself picking up my camera daily, capturing the moments that speak to me, showing God’s wonder and beauty, his promises … through the challenge, the heartache, the tears and the laughter I am compelled to refocus, reframe and start sharing the story that is within me.
So I ask again, what is framing your year?
Rachel Willey
Hillsong Creative Gold Coast
Apr 9 2019
