About: Gains and Losses - Lifes Ups and Downs

This post started out as a short sermon to some elderly folks and I thought that perhaps it’s a message that deserved a bit wider audience.

I called it “Gain and Loss” because that is what life is like, and if you haven’t discovered that for yourself, look out!

Eventually, we will all discover the nature of loss, even though for the first part of our lives, most of us experience gain, after gain, after gain.

Our youth is all about discovery, learning, exploring, receiving, in fact it’s a bit of a dream world for many of us. I realize that this is not always so, many children experience an untimely loss of a parent, a pet, a sibling or grandparent or even their innocence.

But in general, the first half of our lives is often a steady series of gains and in the whole, is probably quite positive. But eventually we realize that there is much more to the story, this state of being can’t go on indefinitely, eventually life (or death) catches up with us.

Even though we probably recognize that life is a series of gains and losses, ups and downs we try our best to forget that every time that we gain something, as wonderful as that is, it opens us up to the possibility of losing what we’ve gained sometime in the future.

A house can burn down or it could be re-possessed, a car wears out and eventually quits. When we get a new puppy or a kitten, we know that it will grow older and one day it won’t be with us anymore.

We know that a job doesn’t last forever, our health deteriorates over time and when we get married, part of the vows say, “as long as you both shall live” so we know that even the best marriage doesn’t last forever.

Our kids don’t stay little; they grow up and move away. Our hair doesn’t stay red or black or brown or blonde, eventually it turns grey and sometimes it even falls out!

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. “Who is this guy with all the bad news? This is depressing.”

But there is some good news and I’m getting to it right away here, don’t worry.  Because even though every single thing that exists will someday fade away, absolutely everything, even mountains will one day be gone, but there is one gain that will never turn to loss, there is one thing that is very real, that will never perish, never fade, never disappear.

Some of you may have guessed already what it is I’m talking about.

I’m talking about being fortunate enough to gain Jesus in our lives, to have a personal relationship with God; I’m talking about salvation, the most incredible gain that we can ever experience.

And the wonderful thing about knowing Jesus as our savior, about being saved, and having that assurance that we will spend eternity in the presence of God, the wonderful thing is that this is a gain that we will not lose.

In Romans 8:35-39, Paul says that nothing will be able to separate us from the Love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing! And that my friends, is GOOD NEWS!

So even though everything else will one day end, the most precious thing, the most valuable thing, will never end. And this is something that we can all have if we choose Jesus, it’s not some exclusive club that only the rich get into, we all have that opportunity to choose life.

Once we have truly accepted Jesus Christ into our lives and made that choice to love Him, to follow Him, to worship Him, then He will never leave us and our eternal future is secure.

I’m just full of good news now, aren’t I? This is the part of being a Christian that I love, not just knowing the good news, but also being able to share it with others!

So here it is again: Jesus died, He gave His life for our sins and He did it so that we can be forgiven, and our faith in Him guarantees our forgiveness and that means that we are truly saved.

Our faith in Jesus means that we are forgiven, our faith means that we can have hope, it means that we are adopted sons and daughters of God like it says in Romans 8:23.

Loss is part of life, death is part of life, and every gain will one day turn to loss and disappear, except one, the very best one of all!

Antique Skates at the Ukrainian Heritage Village

Picture Perfect

My brother, sisters & I

I was thinking today about what makes a photograph art? And is there such a thing as the perfect photograph? Of course there's the subjective side of things and we may all have a different opinion on any given image. But for me, the answer might be connected to our concept of what life is. Is life just a random confluence of matter and time and events that just sort of falls out of the sky, or the brain, to splatter on the pavement in front of us to be interpreted sort of like a street Rorschach test? Or is there a lot more meaning to life, and a lot less random particle collisions with weird outcomes and more ………………….life, love, beauty, and God?

A photograph can be a lot of things, just like a human life. It can be dull, boring and flat, but useful. It can be a record of a place or time, but with no-one to care about it or be interested in it, it might seem to have no point. But if it has a connection to something or somewhere that people care about and are interested in, it has a life and a magic of its own. If it has a provenance that is somehow intertwined with our lives or something we care about it comes alive to us.

 Today I was looking at a box of old pictures that really tells a story of who my family is. After my mom’s death, it seems I was appointed as the “keeper of the past” without even realizing it, (and I didn’t even get a tee-shirt). There are hundreds of photographs and negatives and papers and keepsakes that are a living record of my family throughout the generations. As I looked at these old pictures of people, many of whom I didn’t even recognize, I was sad. Who were these people who were so obviously important to people who were important to people who were important to people I care about?

Normally, I don’t spend a lot of time taking family pictures or people pictures at all, but looking back through these old photos, I realize that they do have importance, even for those of us who are not sentimental about them. Most people are kind of funny looking and they definitely are not models so they don’t know how to pose very well and they make funny faces and have bad hair and weird clothes, wait a minute, that’s just me I’m talking about, you on the other hand, look great!

Don’t get me wrong, there is beauty in just being family to one another. All of those traditions and little rituals and trade-offs that are part of growing up Canadian in the times that we live in, have a meaning and a beauty of their own, I know that. And I know that an incredibly beautiful photograph can be absolutely empty of any other meaning if it doesn’t connect the viewer with life in some way. The best pictures connect us to something in our own lives, a memory, a moment, a fear, a shared experience, a dream, an emotion, even a nightmare. That’s the challenge of artists of all kinds, but especially the photographer. That’s what separates the record keepers, from those that can draw the viewer into the scene and capture their heart.

There are at the very least, two kinds of beauty when it comes to photographs: The kind that comes from the existing emotional attachment that we have with the subject and the kind that the photographer manages to evoke through the subject, or in spite of the subject, even without a pre-existing connection.

Life also seems to diverge into two parallel paths, do we choose door A with the easy path, the wide path that so many are taking, do we just follow along because it happens to be the easy way and everyone is doing it, or do we choose the narrow door, the one that looks hard to enter? If my record in the supermarket checkout line is any indication, I’m in trouble! But I've learned to stick with it and ride it out, even if my mind says, “go that way, fool.” 

Sorry, I don’t have a lot of answers, but when it comes to beauty, I’m convinced I have it right. To me, much of the beauty around us comes from the family who loves you and makes you happy. Beauty and perfection, in a photograph are very similar, if you love it, and it makes you happy, that's great, and if it happens to serve God in some way, even just by sharing the wonder of creation, or by recording the family that He gave you and the moments that you've shared with them, you just might be on the right track.

Mom, Terry, Chris, Doug, & Duke in 1962.