the power of images

I like waiting rooms.

Not just waiting rooms -- I like sitting and watching people in airports, at bus stops, in lobbies, at the DMV, even at the post office and the bank and the grocery store (um, only standing works better than sitting at those places). Oh, restaurants and coffee shops are good places, too.

A couple of the most unforgettable life lessons I've learned started off with a conversation I'd overheard in a waiting room/lobby.

A few years ago I was in the waiting room at the dentist listening to two old (old) ladies talking while one lady's husband was inside with the dentist. Unbeknownst to the man having his teeth fixed, his wife of many decades was wiling her time seriously bragging on him -- going on and on to the other lady about how wonderful her husband was (and always had been) at knowing directions and how to get places.

I'm not sure the second lady really cared, but I came home with a much better idea of what I would want my marriage to look and sound like about sixty or seventy years in. Most of real life really is that mundane (e.g., trips to the dentist), but steadfast love really can make it that exciting (e.g., where being able to navigate black asphalt in a car is heralded like a great hero's conquests in an epic poem).

I unloaded my dentist story on the first friend whose attention I could claim, who ended up being just the right friend for that story, and who referred me to one of his favorite songs (very important to listen until the last verse). It hit the spot.

Last Friday I had another life lesson waiting in the lobby of a women's and children's shelter, talking to a fairly old lady who had lost much of her life to some kind of substance abuse, and listening to another younger lady tell her story.

It was funny because on Thursday night Don had been teaching about how sin steals our treasures -- how it steals our time and our fellowship with God and all of the truly sweet things in our lives. Listening to these ladies, I heard about how sin had stolen some of their most precious possessions. Not the material possessions -- those were restored easily enough [relatively speaking!]. Their addictions to drugs had stolen their lives, their roles in their families and communities, and the respect and companionship of their children. The addiction stole parts of their minds, and it hung a dark black cloud over their memories.

These are pictures I won't forget.

I was thinking about the power of images recently, when I spent an afternoon driving out to the Long Beach Convention Center to visit with a lady I used to work for. I know I'll forget most of what happened that afternoon and evening. But while I was there I had an image imprinted on my memory -- it took about 10 seconds of the 6 hours spent on that trip -- that was more than doubly worth the trip out.

I watched her -- one of the most powerful and charismatic and popular people I know -- staring out a hotel window at the Long Beach bay, dressed in a beautifully tailored suit and perfectly coiffed -- looking empty and lonely. One picture captured something that in eight years I don't think I've ever been able to put into words.

It amazes me how aptly one image can express eight years of experience. How one overheard conversation can capture for me the meaning of lifelong marital fidelity, another the irreversible ravages of sin.

We talk a lot about bearing God's Word to a lost world. I don't know that we talk so much about bearing His image. But the two really can't be separated.