A Single Exposure (Friday Devotional)

 

Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

- Ephesians 5:15-16

Thomas Joshua Cooper is one of the most celebrated landscape photographers in the world, renowned for the meditative beauty he captures in some of the world’s most remote places. But as well-known as his photographs are in the art world, his process is perhaps even more famous.

First, Cooper spends months meticulously researching a location, seeking out parts of the world that few have ever tracked down. Then he loads up his 1898 Agfa field camera—that’s not a model number, it’s the year the camera was made—travels to the far-flung spot, waits for the lighting to get just right, and takes a single exposure of what he sees. There is no backup camera taking rapid-fire digital shots just in case, nor are there any do-overs if he misses the desired photograph on the first try. With one shot, his work is done—after all the preparation, he gives himself one chance to do something beautiful.

As unusual an approach as that is for photography, it offers a valuable insight to life: each of us is given one life to live. Your time on this earth is finite. There is a limit to what you can accomplish in the span of years God gives you.

But in that time, you have the opportunity to do something beautiful. Rather than wasting your days on the trivialities that the world focuses on, Jesus offers you abundant life, a life lived for the glory of God and the good of others. Instead of pursuing earthly power, fame, and wealth, the Lord invites you to become a participant in the kingdom of God. In a world where so many people are defined by their own dreams and desires, you can bear witness to the grace of God.

You can do something special, something beautiful, something of eternal significance with the life God has given you if you will commit to following His way in a world that follows its own paths. God has given you the grace of a single exposure to this world—may you do something beautiful with your shot.