I Took A Picture And Then Deleted It

You took it with the good light behind you.

Which means you thought about the angle, which means it was not a snap, which means you wanted a decent photograph of a leaf.

And you looked at it, and it was a good picture, and about ninety seconds later you deleted it.

Not because it was bad. Because of what it would look like if somebody scrolled past it. A man of your age with a photograph of a plant in his phone.

So the whole of this is about the ninety seconds, and not at all about photography.

And the ninety seconds were busy. Something was assessed, a verdict was reached, and an action was taken, all of it inside a minute and a half, by a man standing alone in his own kitchen with nobody else in the building. That is worth slowing down and looking at, because whatever ran in there is still running.

Nobody was going to see it.

Rejoice with me

There is a line in one of the shortest parables Jesus tells, and the size of the thing being celebrated is the point of it.

And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. (Luke 15:9, King James Version)

Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.

You are looking at somebody in scripture calling the neighbors in over one small object, and the size of what was found has never once been what made that appropriate. Luke 15:9 says rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man who deleted a photograph ninety seconds after taking it.

Look at the scale of it. One coin. Not a fortune, not a house, not a son.

And she calls the friends and the neighbors together, which in that village meant an actual gathering, over a coin she had found under the furniture.

You are in company that scripture does not embarrass, and a celebration over one small object has never once been written up as an excess. Luke 15:9 tells it approvingly and adds no correction, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets that stand.

Jesus tells that story without a line where somebody points out that it is only a coin.

You were never going to be the first person to make something of a small find, and that story has never once been told as a story about a woman overdoing it. The Spirit of God is what makes a small celebration allowable rather than merely excusable, and Luke 15 is where the neighbors are called in.

The audience that does not exist

Now the practical half, and it is about the ninety seconds.

Go back over what actually happened in them.

The picture was taken. It was looked at. It was good. And then a scene assembled itself, quickly and without being asked, in which somebody else was looking through your phone and came across it.

That scene is the whole mechanism. Not the photograph. The imagined scroll.

You are being governed by a scene that assembled itself without being asked, and an imagined moment has never once had the authority you handed it. Luke 15:9 calls real people together over a real thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells the two apart.

And the person in that scene is nobody in particular. If you try to name them you cannot, because they are not a real person, they are a composite of everybody who has ever made a man feel soft for caring about something.

You have been managing a phone for an audience that does not exist, and no imagined stranger has ever once been entitled to a vote on what you keep. What is written in Luke 15:9 calls real neighbors together over a real coin, and the Holy Spirit is the one who dissolves an audience that was never in the room.

And here is what deleting it actually cost, which is more than it looks.

In three months you will not remember which Tuesday it was, or how far along the leaf was, or what the light did. The photograph was the only thing that would have held that.

So the ninety seconds did not protect you from anything, because there was no threat, and it did remove the only record of a day that was quietly good.

You are permitted to keep a record of an ordinary good day, and a photograph nobody else sees has never once been a thing that needed justifying. Luke 15:9 has a whole street called in over a coin, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a small keeping allowable.

You have given up something real in exchange for protection from something imaginary, and that trade has never once been one you agreed to knowingly. The Spirit of God is the one who names that without making it a tragedy, and Luke 15 is the ground under the calling in.

Take it again and keep it

So here is the instruction and there is a restriction on it that matters.

Take the picture again today. Same plant, same leaf, and take the trouble over the light again, because taking trouble is not the problem here.

And keep it.

And do not send it to anybody.

That last part is deliberate. Sending it makes it a communication, and a communication can be received badly, and then the whole thing depends on somebody else's reply. Keeping it and sending it to nobody means the photograph exists for exactly one reason, which is that you wanted it.

That is the entire exercise. A picture you wanted, kept, with no audience attached to it at all.

You are able to keep something for the sole reason that you wanted it, and a photograph with no recipient has never once been a pointless one. Luke 15:9 has a woman calling the neighbors over one found coin, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man taking the same picture twice.