A light in the darkness

Radiant Light

Chicago at night from the sky

New!! Photoblog!

You can get one too... here's how

Apparently, photoblogging is now not only easy, but free... as in, images can now be hosted by Blogger/Hello/Google.
Chalk one up for the plus-side of Google's new internet dominance.

Why "shadowstories"?

The article above is not only intruiging (and provided a good non-copyrighted name/phrase to use as a new blog title), but captures a theme that's been of great interest to me for a while now. Ever since being at Wheaton and hearing the likes of Frederick Buechner, Jerry Root, and Walter Wangerin Jr. come to chapel and speak, I've developed a love for seeing the power of story. I'm no writer, nor a great storyteller, but I recognize the power of story. This was more recently captured in the end of The Two Towers (movie) in Samwise Gamgee's put-together-in-script speech:

It's like in the great stories, ... The ones that really matter. Full of darkness and danger they were And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because you want the end to be happy. How can the world go back to the way it was when so much bad is happening. But in the end, it's only a passing thing. The shadows, the darkness must pass. A new day will come out. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stay with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. So i think Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. All of those stories has lots of chances for turning back, but they didn't. They kept going, because they were holding onto something.

And people forget, that most of the Bible is written in narrative, storybook format (i.e. over 50% of the Old Testament; and the rest being in poetry). Yet we so often conceive of the Bible as "facts" or "instructions"... if you grew up like me, you grew up with "Bible stories" in children's Sunday School. Funny how when we grow up, we lose the sense of stories. But shadow-stories... stories hidden under the surface, is where power lies. It's like Jesus' parables. He tells a story that talks nothing of God, and his listeners "let their guard down"... "oh Jesus is only talking about a farmer and seeds."

Then BAM! (think old-school live-action Batman, BAM)... it hits them at the end, that Jesus WAS talking about God after all. That's where traditional evangelism training is amiss, I believe... where we teach how to present truth and answer questions, though important. Yet the bigger picture out there, is how to listen for the story of the person in front of you... and seeing how that story intersects with God's story... the Author of all history (see the connection?)

I've never been an artist- drawing, web art, photography, (ok maybe music to some extent). But I hope the pictures posted here are not just about cool images... but images that evoke something, that point to subtleties, and ultimately reveal God even when it isn't apparent how or why at first glance.

Enjoy.