Joseph - Beauty Redefined

I thought I was getting it easy when the team assigned the seemingly frivolous responsibility of “official team photographer” to me. I knew I definitely wouldn’t have to rack my brains for creative skit and performance ideas, or to endure the stress and hassle of managing the donated items and gifts we were bringing to Living Waters (which is ironic, because the guy in charge of logistics, and thus the gargantuan responsibility of managing the donated items, had two years of experience as a photographer for a magazine. I’m sure I appreciated the irony more than he did).

If sacrifice is a required aspect of service, then I probably wasn’t being of service. I was enjoying my job (though I’d hardly call it a job), taking photos of the smiling kids, the bashful teenagers and the missionaries claiming that they were “getting that zoo feeling again”. The camera made interaction easy; I didn’t need a lot more than “senyum(smile)”, “ganteng(handsome)” and “cantik(pretty)” to communicate somewhat effectively. I confess that at times, the so-called responsibility of taking photos also served as a very good excuse to do a little less dishwashing or brick carrying, and for the initial part of the trip I saw no greater significance to being the team photographer.

Its funny how the pivotal point of the trip for me came in a rare moment when I didn’t have my camera hanging around my neck. But it was a moment that I couldn’t have captured. We were all attending a prayer meeting before the start of the Sunday service in the Aola room used for children’s ministry. My focus tends to wander during prayer meetings, and it didn’t help that most of the prayer was carried out in very rapid Bahasa Indonesia. But as my eyes started to drift around the room I started to notice the items lining the shelves and the walls. There was a familiarity about the items, the kind of stuff I would have donated had I heard of a place like Living Waters.

Aola Room

Then it struck me. Everything I had seen in Living Waters, from the smiles on the faces of the children to the cheerfully painted buildings, from the bricks lying by the roadside to the freshly cooked meals we were eating, was a physical manifestation of God’s love, His love that had been laid upon Ps. Ronny’s heart, on the heart of his family, on the hearts of the missionaries and leaders there, and of the donors from all over the world. I was walking, living and breathing in a physical manifestation of God’s love. And it was beautiful.

I called that a pivotal point because from that point on being the team photographer, along with everything else I was doing, took on fresh meaning. Being the photographer was now a privilege, an opportunity to capture God’s manifest love, which I was beginning to see in every aspect of the Living Water’s experience. It was evident in the teaching sessions; the members of our team involved in teaching were evidently enjoying connecting with their students and making a very tangible difference in their lives, delighting at the potential and progress displayed by each child. It was a little subtler in activities that lacked an interpersonal factor, like manual labour or painting, but as my city dwelling limbs struggled to shovel the cement-soapwater mixture used to make bricks, I was distinctly aware that I was becoming part of a process of building God’s love, one brick at a time.

God's love: One brick at a time

I was coming to a new level of appreciation for the profound beauty of God’s love. There are no rooftop verandahs, no postmodernist architecture or private swimming pools in Living Waters, but when I recognized that everything I was taking in was a physical manifestation of His love, I saw a beauty that possessed a level of depth that man’s artistry alone would never achieve.

And the things of the earth, the marble floors, the dazzling chandeliers, and all the things that are beautiful by worldly and materialistic standards grow strangely dim. They grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace, channeled to the world as glimmers and glimpses of heaven, through the hearts and lives of those who come to Him as willing vessels.