The devil is in the detail

I enjoy night photography (although twenty to seven is hardly “night” in most places!) Do you see how this works? One second I’m talking about night photography, and the next you are wondering how it’s dark so early. One more quick diversion; its dark because this picture was taken close to Christmas in the UK where it is indeed dark much earlier than this. (You can see a Christmas tree in one of the lower windows of The Speaker’s residence end of the building). “Detail” in this context can be highly interesting but tends to detract from the main thing. The main thing here is that this is a good (well, not bad anyway) night picture of the Palace of Westminster. Big Ben is due to be silenced while workers make repairs to the building and tower over the next few years and much of the building will be covered up. If you look above the streetlight on the left of the picture, you can see part of the building already covered up so if you want to take pictures like this you need to do it soon or wait a long time. Did that spoil the picture for anyone? Knowing some of my friends it will have! Sorry!

When it comes to faith, the detail is so often to do with the finer points of theology or are we “doing it right”? Matthew 18:3 instead gives us the idea that we need to become as children, simple, humble, to enjoy the Kingdom of Heaven. Sure, the details of theology are important and I love to dig around and ask questions, but sometimes we just need to enjoy the moment. In the middle of the story here, there is a child. I expect that child (verse 2) really enjoyed that moment helping Jesus without needing to understand all that Jesus was teaching the adults. Enjoy the moment! Being too distracted with the details takes away from the big picture. Step out and use faith instead of just figuring out every aspect of the theology of faith. Enjoy the photograph too!