I just returned from my early walk with Max – it’s wet this morning so we couldn’t go too far (Golden Retrievers absorb twice their body weight in water just watching the rain!).

When I checked my phone it said 7:08, but I inadvertently touched something that allowed me to slide between lock-screen image selections. Then – also inadvertently – I took screenshoots of two of them (fact is half the stuff I do on my phone is either by accident or something it just decided to do all by itself).

Once I figured out what I was doing I grabbed images of all the lock-screen pictures I have had in the past year. Then I thought about why I chose them and discovered something interesting. Where I tend to choose my Facebook “cover photo” to say something about myself to the world… I choose my iPhone lock-screen to say something about the world to myself.

• I choose my “cover photo” to say something about myself to the world
• I choose my lock-screen image to say something about the world to myself.

It’s an interesting thought. But it looks like that’s what I have been doing, even though it was – until now – subconscious.

The image on the face of my iPhone is something I look at dozens of times a day. I have never analyzed my reasoning before, but on some level that photograph, the one that comes up every time I pick up my phone, is offering me a story about the world; and, like everything that becomes routine, it has an effect on how I think.

Here they are, in order from January 2023 through today. There are just five, and you can see that while I had the first for over a year, I have changed more frequently in the past six months.

The five images:

Number one is on the beach at Camber Sands, close to the town where I grew up on the southeast coast of England. Rebekah and I met our son Andrew and his family there for a holiday in October of 2022.

The serenity of the beach and the English Channel and the beautiful layered gray skies remind me of a wonderful vacation and pure relaxation with people we love. It speaks peace into my life.

The second is from the 12-day cruise Rebekah and I took right after my mum died. The picture – looking out from the stern of the massive ship to see the wide, wide ocean, the spectacular skies, and the message that so much now lies behind us – also speaks peace as well as thanksgiving.

Number three is our church, Howard Memorial, where we have come to – essentially – recalibrate after a good seven years of focus on my parents and their care. We are here simply to love these beautiful people, and to encourage them, and to help facilitate their path forward as a congregation. It’s a screen I will probably change back to before long, now I know how!

Then, two shots of the Tar River. Not only does the shape of the image fit the phone screen well, the photograph carries a message of continuity and of forward motion and of constant renewal.

So there you have it, a little thought about and analysis of what an iPhone lock-screen image says – even if it’s not something intentional.

Praying that the images you look at every day will speak peace and goodness and hope and promise into your life – DEREK