Enshrined in bronze… meet the Press. How astonished a Press photographer from the Fifties would be if they were given a modern camera. If that new camera were digital instead of film, I don’t think they’d believe it was real.
Old but beautifully machined; accurate shutters, decent lenses, lovely leather bellows for focussing. And that flash unit! Explosive combustion of glass bulbs- one blast of light which might singe your eyebrows. Then having taken a photo on light-sensitive plates or sheets of film, off to a lab for chemical processing and hard-won wizardry to produce expensive prints or glass slides.
Modern technology and engineering has changed the process of photography beyond measure.
Yet the goal is the same: to capture the “decisive moment” of an action or object, recording it for posterity. Photography aids our memories, records moments of history or newsworthy events; it preserves beauty and can tell a powerful story of life events and relationships.
OR the photographer may cut off the head or feet of the subject, blur or shake the image, or just take mind-numbingly boring pictures that no-one else wants to see! (Taking a photo of a statue of a paparazzi taking a photo, for example…)
Photo = light, graphy = writing… Writing with light. Isn’t it a shame that photography hadn’t been invented when God started “writing with Light” at the incarnation of Jesus, the Light of the world!
To see pictures of Mary & Joseph, scruffy shepherds, assorted Wise Men, and a sulky Herod? To record forever the angels who told of the Blessed Child, and then gathered the legions of Heaven to rejoice over Bethlehem… and, of course, the baby pictures of Jesus at birth, one day old, a week, a month. If only.
If Jerusalem had newspapers and a horde of reporters… has God missed a trick? If Jesus were born today, the news would be all round the globe as soon as the broadband was switched on!
But since the media frenzy has the attention span of a gnat, the story would be dumped by Tuesday. Instead, Almighty God sent a messenger with Good News and a promise. Luke 2:37 says “For no word from God will ever fail.”
Two thousand years later, the story is still current. “In the beginning was the Word… and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” is how John’s Gospel begins.
No photos- but a Living Word.
Look, See, Pray 