bouncing light

I like the moon. I'm not sure when I started really liking seeing the moon, but I do. The moon reminds me a little bit of life. Forgive me if you've heard me say this before (because I have said this before). The moon, as we know, doesn't produce any light of it's own; but the moon is normally the brightest thing in the night sky. You can see the moon during the day at times too.

It reminds me that I am ordinary, and that there are many other people in this world. There are many people who are more qualified than I am. There are others who are smarter, or more kind or whatever. However, if my life has light in it, the light comes from somewhere else.

I am not really trying to be self deprecating here, nor am I am trying to be unnecessarily humble. It's just that no matter where I am in my life, no matter how well or poorly I'm living my life, the thing I want others to see is Christ.

Even if the moon is only a sliver, and the light from the sun is only hitting a tiny bit of it, it's still the brightest thing in the sky. I find that terribly encouraging. That people don't have to see me. They may see the "texture" of my life, they may see the stuff I do that has left a scar, a crater from where through my own choices or just from life, I've taken hits, but the first I hope they see is the light. At first I hope they see I'm not just a big rock floating in space, but that they see the light (try not to linger on the "Doug as a big rock floating in space" image, it's not as compelling as the moon).

The first photograph I took of the moon the other night went all white, the moon's surface was overexposed, as the camera tried to balance the dark sky and the bright moon. So you saw the shape but not the detail. I ended up taking a number of photos until I got the amount of lunar surface texture that I thought looked good. The point is, often you have to really look at the moon to see that texture. Often to really see it you must magnify it.

This post as I think and reread feels a tad more corny then what I usually write about, but I saw the moon the other night and I felt I needed to write about what I thought.