Our daily life paces at a break neck speed. Each task is like a large collection of pictures. By day’s end, our heads our spinning as we feel as though we’ve seen 5000 things. Each task, makes up the shutter speed of our life. Each task is an allotment of our day. Load the dishwasher, that’s 1/125th of the day. Check a text, that’s 1/5000th. Of course, we repeat this task a thousand times! Got to work, now there’s a long-term exposure. We stay busy doing many many things, all at different speeds. We live our lives as if we are in high-speed continuous shooting mode. But are we creating anything that lasts?
In photography when we shoot at 1/5000 of a second, not very much light comes in, even if we use a big f-stop or aperture–even with a premium lens.
So how do we accomplish all the tasks of the day with intentionality, purpose, and quality?
I suppose some of it depends on how we start and end our day, and more importantly how we transition from task to task through out:
- Do we start each day with a quick prayer?
- Lord, Jesus help me get thru this day.
- Woof down our lunch and forget to pray?
- Go to bed and rattle off our litany of prayer requests for ourselves, and then others if we have time? Perhaps an occasional utterance of gratitude? Does this sound familiar? I know I am speaking to myself here on so many of my days.
Living life this way is like going thru our day and taking a whole lot of pictures but not having enough time to edit them. We don’t have enough time to make them meaningful because we have too many to go through. Our clarity (perspective) on the totality of the sum total of all these tasks & images is hazy. When we have too much to do, our purpose for the whole batch seems to not make any sense. We’ve lost sight of the big picture, because of sheer volume of small pictures.
But there IS a better way:
LESS is MORE!!
This is our struggle: Like an over-bloated picture library, we have to DOWNSIZE the VOLUME of our tasks and then apply precision FOCUS and INTENTIONALITY to that which remains.
Like editing pictures, we have to PRIORITIZE our tasks into CATEGORIES:
Must Do
Ought to Do
Could Do
Want to Do
Definitely Don’t Do (Not worthy of my time , harmful, keeps me from God)
But how do we get to this better way? Faith or F8th! Faith in Jesus who can supply all of our needs!
We must pray continuously as we start, move through out or day, and end it.
In photography, a good picture results when these three things work in harmony: aperture (how much light comes in), shutterspeed (how fast or slow the light comes in), and ISO (your camera’s sensitivity to light).
We can use some of these same elements and improve our daily life:
Son and light – Spend enough “time value” with Jesus and FOCUS on what his words mean. How can I apply his lessons, not just read words on a page?
Speed – “Slow down, you move to fast” — Paul Simon -59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) We all know we have to slow down. The key is to do it. Unplug from media. Take in each moment. Linger sometimes. Listen more. Be present. Breathe.
Light Sensitivity – Cultivate a teachable spirit. Pray often. Ask for wisdom. Ask for help in being kinder. Appreciate this day we’ve been given. Love well. And ask for divine help when it’s hard to do so.
Transition between our tasks with a gratitude prayer. Let God’s light in. It’s like opening up the aperture to our heart.
Do these things and you may accomplish less, but live more. You may find an inconvenient truth that even some photographers already know: Not every moment was designed to be documented, but rather written in a permanent place in our heart and savored in that sacred place.
Life is magnificent, even during the mundane tasks and the overwhelming volume and pace we’ve grown accustomed to.
On your way out the door, look up. Check the weather. It’s a perfect day to shoot at F8th!
LIZ LOGIC 
thanks for sharing!