I Am Not In Any Of The Pictures

You went looking for something last week and found six years instead.

You were scrolling back for one particular photograph and you noticed, somewhere around the third year, that you were not in any of them.

Not none at all. There are two or three where somebody handed the phone to a stranger, and one from a wedding. But of the ordinary days, the hundreds of them, the days out and the afternoons and the two trips, there is almost no evidence that you were present.

Because you were. You were about four feet away from every single one of those photographs, holding the thing that took it.

And here is what happened in you when you noticed, which is why I am writing this. It was not self pity. It was something quieter and stranger, which was the thought that in thirty years there will be a record of this family and you will not be in it.

Let me deal with that, because it is worth dealing with, and then let me give you something smaller than you expect to do about it.

Thou God seest me

There is a name given to God in Genesis by somebody nobody was looking for, and she is the one who names Him, and the name is about being seen.

And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I not also looked after him that seeth me? (Genesis 16:13, King James Version)

You have a name for God in the written word that means He is the one who sees, and no day of those six years has ever once gone by without you being in that record. Genesis 16:13 has her naming Him as the God who sees rather than asking Him to look, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific to a man who has spent six years four feet outside the frame.

Look at who says it. A servant woman, on her own, in a desert, at the point in her story where nobody in the household she belonged to was thinking about her at all.

She is the one person in Genesis who gives God a name. And the name she gives Him is: You see me.

You are seen by the one whose name is that He sees, and no amount of being the person nobody photographs has once altered it. It is written that she called the name of the LORD Thou God seest me, spoken by somebody entirely outside anybody else's record, which is why the seeing does not depend on being in a picture, and the Spirit of God is what makes that land in a man scrolling back through six years.

And notice the second half of what she says. Have I not also looked after him that seeth me. She looked back. There was an exchange in it. She was not merely observed, she was met.

You are not merely accounted for, and no year of standing outside the frame has ever once made this a matter of being counted rather than known. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns being seen into being met, and Genesis 16 has a woman naming God out of an encounter rather than out of a doctrine.

The pictures are not the record

Now the practical part, and I want to separate two things that have got joined together here.

The first is a real practical problem: there are almost no photographs of you with your children, and in twenty years that will matter to them rather than to you. That is worth fixing and I will tell you how in a minute.

The second is a feeling that you were absent, and that one is false, and it is the one doing the damage.

You were present at every one of those days, and no absence from the photographs has once been an absence from the day. The Spirit of God is what separates a record from a reality in a man's mind, and it is written that God's own name is that He sees, which is a record kept by somebody other than a camera.

Because here is what was actually happening in those hundreds of photographs. Somebody was watching this family closely enough to know when something worth keeping was happening. That is not the work of a man who was not there. That is the work of the most attentive person on the day.

The reason you took the pictures is that you were the one paying attention.

You are the person who was watching most closely on every one of those days, and being behind the camera has never once been the same thing as being outside the day. It is written Thou God seest me, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man see his own attention as presence rather than as distance.

Now, the practical half, because your children will want pictures of you and that is a real thing.

The reason there are none is not that nobody thought of it. It is that a camera in your hands is a job, and nobody takes a job off somebody who is doing it well. Your family has no idea you would like to be in the frame, because a man holding a camera looks like a man who wants to.

Hand it over for ten minutes

So here is the assignment.

Hand the camera to somebody for ten minutes on the next day out. And be in the frame.

Ten minutes, and hand it to one specific person, and say what you want plainly: take the camera for a bit, I want to be in some of these.

You are able to say what you want in one sentence, and asking to be in a photograph has never once been vanity in a father. Genesis 16:13 has a woman name what she needed out loud rather than wait for it, and the Spirit of God is with a man handing a phone to a fourteen year old.

And then the harder half, which is what you do with the ten minutes. Be in the frame properly, which means stop directing.

Do not tell them where to stand. Do not check the picture afterward. Do not say get one of all of us with the water behind. Every one of those puts you back in charge of the photograph, and then you are the photographer again with your body in the shot.

You are able to be photographed rather than to supervise a photograph, and letting somebody take a bad one has never once cost this family anything. It is written that she was met rather than merely observed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man be looked at for ten minutes without managing it.

They will be badly framed. Somebody's head will be cut off, probably yours. That is genuinely fine, and in twenty years nobody will notice the framing and everybody will notice that their father was there.

And do it once every day out. Ten minutes. That is all this needs, forever.