PreacherSarah

Bridges have long been a part of our lives. The oldest datable bridge in the world still in use is the slab-stone single-arch bridge over the river Meles in Izmir (formerly Smyrna), Turkey, which dates from 850 BC. Remnants of Mycenaean bridges dated  c.   1600 BC exist in the neighborhood of Mycenae, Greece over the River Havos. Bridges have made it possible for us to cross over water, over a deep valley, and over rough terrain. We can walk over them or we can drive over them. There are even bridges for trains. I have gone over my share of bridges. Growing up in Michigan, I went over the Mighty Mackinac bridge a number of times. It is the fifth longest suspension bridge in the world. I have been on the Overseas Highway, a series of 42 bridges that takes you from Miami to Key West. I have even been on what I call “The Brunnel”. That is the bridge-tunnel that goes over and under the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Most of these larger bridges we have to pay to go over. When you are in a

Do you ever intentionally take pictures of people you do not know because the setting is just perfect? Weird or not, I have done it. There are just those opportunities that you have to capture. As you can see in the pictures here, you do not see anyone’s faces and I will not disclose where or when they were taken. But I started thinking about what these people were looking at. They were all taking time to stop and reflect and they cast their gaze on something, whether it is a sunrise, a waterfall, a lake or a horizon. Then I thought about the direction they were looking in. These people were all looking ahead. None of them looked behind or saw that I was taking a picture of them, thank goodness. That might have been embarrassing. Looking forward and not behind….reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures. Isaiah 43:18-19- Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness,

I love to take pictures of shadows. Sometimes I take pictures of my own shadow (below is my shadow taken in Spokane, Washington (August, 2017). I think I do this because my shadow is taller than I actually am, and so for once, I can feel like I am six, or seven or even eight feet tall. Of course, the shadows get longer (or taller in my case) when the sun is lower in the horizon. If I were to take a picture of my shadow at high noon in the summer time, my shadow would not be very tall at all. What else comes to mind when you think about shadows? I think about the things that “lurk in the shadows”. All of the scary things…and evil things. I think about Psalm 23:4, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”. There are times when shadows are perceived as things we need to rid our lives of. The Bible talks about the contrast between the light (representing good) and the darkness (representing evil). At times it also talks about shadows in the negative sense (numerous

  January 18, 2022 Photography as a spiritual practice. I was inspired to make photography my spiritual practice for my first internship during my studies at University of Dubuque Theological Seminary after I had received an email from the Presbyterian Outlook about a webinar they would host called, “Glimpsing Imago Dei: Photography as a Spiritual Practice” with Rev. Jonathon C. Watson. Here is my first entry. Growing up in Michigan, I know winter. I know it inside and out. Frankly, I would rather be inside, literally, where I can stay warm, than out in the cold and snow. When Mike and I married in 2007 it didn’t take him long to convince me we needed to move south in search of warmer weather. We settled on Anderson, South Carolina. While I wanted nothing to do with “wind chills” and “lake effect snow”, I also did not want anything to do with hurricanes. Anderson is almost as far inland and away from the coast as you can go in South Carolina. Snow in Anderson is an event. Just