PASSION: Last week I asked a group of men here at WFPC to tell me about their passion:

• What floats your boat?
• What gets you out of bed in the morning?
• What do you look forward to every day?
• What inspires you to do your best?

There were, of course, a variety of answers, and all of them served to inspire me. What I said, and this has been true for quite a while now, was that my passion is to connect people with what is possible when we deliberately engage the life-charged life as Followers of the Living Way of Jesus.

I try to do this via writing, via speaking, via photography, and via the clear witness that is the way that I live.

I want to write and to speak clearly, and to offer a new lens through which to view God, the universe, the world, our community, our families, and ourselves.

LENS: As a fairly decent photographer, I understand that what we look through makes all the difference. Photography itself doesn’t just use various lenses, photography is a lens through which I see, interpret, and communicate. Likewise, this blog is a lens, and I want you, the reader, to use it as a way to view life, and faith, and possibility.

One definition of “lens” goes like this: “the clear part inside your eye that focuses so you can see things clearly” (Dictionary of Contemporary English).

Well, I’d like us to think of our spiritual lens as the clear part inside our consciousness that focuses so we can see God clearly.

All this is by way of a kind of rambling preface to some of the observations I’m making to go along with today’s featured photographs.

EDUCATION: Two themes that I love in photography are doors/windows, and paths/roads. They speak to me of openings, light, possibilities, journeys, pilgrimage, openings, and more.

The photograph to the right was taken from the CTS library looking toward the student center. The image represents the strong grounding of the Presbyterian Church in scholarship, education, and the imperative to engage the world as thinking Christians. The pathway to ministry goes directly through the cross, a Celtic Cross, meaning a church that is both Reformed and reforming.

LIGHT: The top photograph in this post looks out through the archway in our old dorm. That’s where Rebekah and I got engaged, October 7, 1978, in the room above the arch, the historic Peter Marshall room. The image incorporates all the elements. The opening, the pathway, the journey into light.

The second image is a different look at the same view, then the fourth (below) takes a look back.

HISTORY: The “look back” is telling, I believe, because it’s critically important that we know where we’ve come from if we’re going to continue to move forward.

That’s one reason our short visit to Columbia was so good. We looked back gratefully, at the rich heritage of education, encouragement, faith and fellowship that set us off and running into a life of ministry. But it was a looking back that continues to propel us forward. We’re rooted in Reformed theology, yes, but we’re living and serving into the continued reforming, reconciling, redemptive, resurrection-powered song of praise that is our ministry today.

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;  All other ground is sinking sand,All other ground is sinking sand.

So my closing image in today’s post has to be this photograph of me, looking forward, through the cross, via the lens of my camera and the lens of my faith, into the promise of a bright tomorrow.

– DEREK