The Bigger Picture

The other day I was looking at a photo of a family taken in the 1860's. Everyone had rigid, serious expressions and appeared very unhappy. Of course life was so much more difficult back then; I imagined they had less to smile about. It was easy for me to project. But I had forgotten; the exposure time for a photograph at that point in history was several seconds. Subjects were told to not smile and remain motionless. That changes everything! Maybe they were giggling with excitment just before the photo was taken or laughed themselves silly when they saw those serious faces a few weeks later. My image of them is bigger now, more complex and less predicatble. It is no longer static like their serious faces and my perception of them.

Now fast forward to the present. Is there a situation that you are seeing only as a snapshot? I certainly am. Sometimes I feel only the unhappiness, pain or loss. Then I imagine that there is more going on behind the scene, that there is actually a bigger picture or a deeper truth unfolding. We are all prone to limiting our fields of vision. We hesitate to trust what we don't see and what we don't understand. We wish it could be different and actually grieve for what we think is missing. But really, what lurks in that great unknown just may be the giggles and laughter, and the greatest adventures we could ever imagine.