LIFE IS A SERIES OF PHOTOGRAPHS

 

 

So tell me friend, can you see what I see?

 

Thanks to modern digital technology, there are more pictures being taken in the world today than ever before, but how those images are displayed and used are much different than was ever possible in previous generations. When I was a boy growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, I first developed a great desire to take photographs of the people, places, and events that represented my world. Our family's finances were such, however, that having a camera of my own was out of the question until I was in high school; and even then, the camera that I could afford then was only a "box" camera with very limited capability to take sharp quality images.

 

Throughout the decades when we were raising our large family, I owned a number of cameras, each successive one a bit better and more technically complex than its predecessor. With these camera, I took thousands of pictures of our children and the places we visited. It wasn't until I was within a few years of my retirement before I was finally able to purchase much better photography equipment.

 

When taking landscape pictures or photographs of places, I try to capture the feeling of actually being there, so anyone looking at the image can see through the lens of my camera what I have seen with my eyes. On those occasions when I have been successful, a few people have told me that they can picture themselves actually being in the photograph. Just like Sister Lindsay and me, my camera is also serving a mission. It goes with me just about everywhere recording images of missionaries and the places where we serve in the Maryland Baltimore Mission.

Who else might be taking pictures of what we are doing on earth and carefully storing them for future review? Because there is no place on earth where we might ever be that isn't known to Our Heavenly Father and knowing that our lives are an open book to our Creator, it's worth considering that everything that we have ever thought, said, or done is being recorded in Heaven as a complete series of photographs representing our full mortal experience from our birth until our death. That thought having been expressed, is there anyone among us who would not like to have some of those pictures removed because what is displayed  depicts our sins and other shortcomings.

The Plan of Salvation authored by God the Father before the creation of this earth and presented to all of His spirit sons and daughters in the Great Council in Heaven before Satan's rebellion provided for a Savior, because Heavenly Father knew that man in his natural state is an enemy to God. The Savior, even Jesus Christ, is the Redeemer of the World; and it is through His atoning sacrifice that our sins will not only be FORGIVEN . . . we are promised that they will also be FORGOTTEN!

This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. (Hebrews 10:16-17)

 

If our sins and iniquities are no longer remembered by the Lord, then those images that show us in the poorest light when we have either done the wrong thing or failed to do the right thing, the sins of commission or omission, will be forever removed. Picture yourself in the Kingdom of God. How great shall be our joy to know that we have been forgiven and allowed to enter into the presence of the Lord.