This is a picture of the moon taken on March 22, 2007 in Cuba. I find the moon very difficult to photograph for two reasons: 1. it is not very bright and somewhat small so unless you have a major zoom lens, most of the picture is black, and 2. I seldom have my tripod when I see a nice moon and my human body cannot hold a camera steady long enough to get a clear shot. However, balconies are great things to lean on and I thank the Blau Costa Verde resort for thoughtfully building some right where I needed them on that night. The shot is not perfectly steady, but the movement works in this case.
One of the things I have been learning about in the past few months is the concept of surrender. You think you know what it means and you say yes, my life is surrendered to God, but then I react to a situation in a bad way and see that my life is anything but surrendered - I very much want to have things go my way and I get annoyed when they do not. And so I am retaking the life-course on surrender right now and finding it challenging and surprisingly, joyful! Who knew that leaving the choice up to someone else could relieve so much stress and heavy responsibility in ones life? One morning I woke up in Cuba with this phrase in my head: If you can't have your way, whose way would you have? It is obvious that we will not always get our way in this life, and in that case, whose way would we like to be subject to? That is really the choice we face every day. Whose way are we going to follow? If we truly believe that God is smarter and wiser and good-er than us, then why do we still fight to get out own way?
The moon is not the sun. It is merely a reflection, not the main source of light. I am like the moon - a reflector of the glory of God, small and partial it may be, yes, but I show the glory of God. Yet so often, as a mere reflection of the source of all light and life, I pretend I am the sun and believe that I am the centre of the universe and things must fall into orbit around me. More than just being a ridiculously funny and absurd concept, this tendency to make myself the centre of things throws my entire life off course as I fight the very laws that God set in place when he created me. The moon does not chart its own course. It finds its place in relation to a world full of people and ultimately, submits to the strong pull of the brightest and purist light we know. Let me do the same.
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