Monday's Meditation, A Boss Your Heart Devo {Not of This World}

Thank you, Kirsten Walkup, for your message today!

Not of This World

By Kirsten Walkup

One of the things I love to do is take pictures. When I’m not working at my regular job that pays the bills, I’m plotting ways to be able to actually make money with my photography. While I’ve made a little money doing various shoots for people, I have yet to make enough to cover the cost of the gear I use (photography is a ridiculously expensive hobby). It’s a labor of love though so I take it all in stride. Lately I’ve been busy and have had a few shoots lined up. This weekend was a big one. I had a large family portrait session on Friday evening and then a fashion show to shoot on Sunday. The two couldn’t have been more different and it turned the weekend into one of the more surreal experiences I’ve ever had.

My Friday shoot (May 13) was with the Patterson’s (our very own Lorraine) and their wonderful (and quite photographable) family. With the exception of forgetting to bring a reflector I always use for outdoor shoots, their portrait session couldn’t have gone better. The lighting was perfect, the family was beautiful, and everyone there really seemed to be joyful. I don’t mean a superficial type of bubbly “joy”, but a peaceful contented joy that only the joy of the Lord can grant. The setting was perfect and I was really in my element. It shows in the final product as the pictures turned out really well.

Saturday was an entirely different matter. I know a guy who’s involved in the fashion industry. He’s a good guy and he’s great to do business with. He also knows a ton of people that could really further my career as a photographer. He asked me to shoot a fashion show for him (think runway and models) and I agreed. When you agree to shoot an event, it’s a big deal because if you back out you can get sued. A photographer has to be extremely certain that they will show up and do a job before they agree to it. It wasn’t until a few days before the event that I realized I was to shoot this thing at a night club (for clarity, this place was a bar, not a strip club).

I wasn’t really happy about the venue but again, I agreed to shoot it so I had to honor my word. I’ve worked in restaurants that had huge bars and have been in environments similar to this before so I didn’t really think it was going to be that big of a deal. Walking into this place, however, it really felt like I was entering a place totally foreign to me. On every level; mentally, physically, and especially spiritually, I encountered people who I was not like and who were not like me. To quote the book of Ruth “there people were not my people, and their god was not my God”.  I truly was a stranger in a foreign land.

Anyone who knows me at all, knows that I am not an insular Christian and that I reach out and befriend the lost. A few of my “biker buddies” are pot-smoking borderline atheists who are in desperate need of salvation. I’ve always believed my role in their life is to be a living example of what God’s grace can do. It’s the fact that I’ve been around the block a few times and have some fairly “rough” friends that made this experience so shocking to me. I firmly believe that out of the 500 or so people in that club that night, I was the only one who knew Christ as Savior. When I left the club to go back to my car, I probably passed another couple hundred who were in the same hopelessly lost state. The whole situation was nothing short of heart-breaking.

The shoot went okay. Photography is really nothing more than interpretation of light and that’s what I set my mind to do amidst all the clutter around me. But the environment was so loud, most of the people were so into the “party”, and the whole event seemed so self-aggrandizing, that on the drive home all I wanted was silence. I had a lot to think about and process, too. At first I was thinking about how strange the place was and how odd most of the people seemed until I realized…I was the odd one, the foreign element out of his environment. The comfy life I’ve crafted for myself and the bubble that I live in has enabled me to forget that there are billions of people in this world who live their lives in utter darkness and despair. They fill their lives with empty pleasures that further their dependency on physical stimulation to fill the spiritual void they dwell in. In short, they are lost in darkness and most of them have yet to encounter a “foreign element” that can show them the way into the light.

I’ve really taken two things away from this whole experience. First, I’m extremely thankful to God whose cleansing salvation has spared me of a life devoid of meaning. Also, as long as the Lord allows me to work with people who are in such need of His Truth, I will do my utmost to demonstrate God’s grace in my life. When my mind begins to get irritated with sinners for being sinners, I will boss my mind to remember where I would be were it not for God’s redeeming grace. When my body tires from working the long hours some of the jobs require, I will boss my body to recall that others have suffered far more than have I. And when my heart breaks at the hopelessness that the lost reside in, I will boss my heart to remember that there is only One who can bring the lost Hope.

Matthew 6:19

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Boss Your Heart!

J330

k

kirsten@kswalkup.com

{Here's a link from Lorraine on the subject of being in the world, but not of it:  click HERE to read more about it.}