Wordless Wednesday

Communication is a frustrating bit of work—laborious and (at times) vexing. Each time I try, I find myself slogging through, encumbered by words and phrases that (at best) can only graze my meaning. After all, how can one encapsulate the infinite (Romans 11:33; Ecclesiastes 3:14, 8:17)? How can frailty face the weightiness of praise (Romans 11:33)?

And what language do rocks speak anyway (Luke 19:40)?

Around us, at all times, there is a symphony. Thing is, most us are too busy or too self-absorbed to listen. We run through the maze of days, collapsing with the night, and closing our eyes with vision like a blur. But the heavens are declaring and the sky always proclaims; sunlit minutes sing out and the stars serenade (Psalm 19:1–4). Beasts impart knowledge and the birds educate—vegetation keeps counsel and fish initiate. Indeed, “Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?” (Job 12:7–9)

Me (if I’m honest).

At least, I know it—here, in my head. It’s the symphony I miss—the praise, the deepening awareness of His excellencies, the everyday sketches of the written Word. And sometimes, when I study too hard, I miss the point that Scripture is trying to make.

One of my heroes of the faith, Oswald Chambers, once said, “A skilled artist does not need to use more than two or three colours; an amateur requires all the tubes in his box squirted out like a condensed rainbow.”^[1] However, Chambers was an artist. Me? I am every bit the amateur. I need every color at my command; every method of communicating—both literally and visually—the truth that Scripture breathes. That said, I’d like to begin a project—a concept I’ve entitled borrowed from others: “Wordless Wednesday.”[2] I want to (try) and tune my soul to creation’s chorus of praise, and I want to focus my camera on the singers—mid-sentence, as it were—in the act of praise.

If “the things we see, hear, smell, and touch affect us long before we believe anything at all,”[3] it is equally true of the flipside as well. Creation continues to call us, to beckon us, if only we’ll take the time to listen.