Civil disobedience against injustice has long been a part of the world’s moral fabric. Sometimes it has come with magnificent public attention, while other times it passed unnoticed when only one person took a stand for what is right, true, just, and God-like. And yet, few will ever know the ripples of inspiration that one person, like Henry David Thoreau, can make or the impact they will radiate for generations to come.
I am haunted by a question a church member asked me: “Why would a loving God allow my husband to be taken from me?” I was her pastor, and I had no satisfactory answer that could ease her grief. Hers was the age-old question: Why do bad things happen to good people?
Yom Hashoah is not called a Day of Forgetting but a Day of Remembrance. The evil committed is remembered, not just out of the pain, but so that it can never happen again.
What is the deepest hurt you have inflicted upon another? Is there a profound sin of which you are ashamed or questioning? Could you be beyond the reach of God’s outstretched fingers pulling you heavenward?
Seeing photographically is not a natural gift the photographer is born with. It comes by practice and concentration, and by training the mind to notice lighting, juxtaposition, angles, contrast, irony, humor, emotion, and beauty. In a similar way, people of faith can train their senses for seeing spiritually, noticing the numinous spirit to where they step—not just in a garden, on a mountaintop, or in nature, but in common life.