Sepia

My wife and I chose to recreate a photo for our wedding that some of her forebears had had taken for their wedding. The fashion of the day was not to smile in any photograph, not even at one’s nuptials. What added to their austere appearance was the color pallette. It was one of those old pictures that had been colored by hand later. Somehow it just makes seem even more serious. Not knowing the phone number for a good photograph colorizer, we opted for sepia instead.

Sepia, if the term is unfamiliar to you, a monochrome method of photography that renders the picture in various shades of brown. If you’ve not seen it in old photographs, you’ve probably seen it in old-timey photographs trying to fake the past like we were.

Does it ever seem like your life is in sepia? Like the color is slowly draining from it. The things that once brought you pleasure now just turn you apathetic? Stuck inside, we turn to devices and entertainments that might normally only occupy a small part of our days. Now they come to dominate them. And we tire of them. A friend remarked, “I think I’ve watched all of Netflix.”

Perhaps that is as it should be. Get tired of your house. Get tired of this earth. Your house is not your home. This earth is not all there is.

Thomas A Kempis write in The Imitation of Christ, it is Christ “Who teaches man to despise earthly possessions and to loathe present things, to ask after the eternal, to hunger for heaven, to fly honors and to bear with scandals, to place all hope in [Him], to desire nothing apart from [Him], and to love [Him] ardently above all things.”

As you weather this time of isolation, get bored. Get really really bored. And seek Christ.

“For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

Hebrews 11:10

Lord, I seek Your face.