Naomi Brewer + Lydie Hampson
4 Min Read
26 October 2018
There are so many different creative ways to pray. Naomi and Lydie share their thoughts on how taking photos can equip and inspire your prayer life:
Daily discipline is a weak spot for me. I’m one of those people who has 10 books on the go at once; some being read backwards, last chapter first. I enjoy spontaneity, creativity, new ideas, the unusual; and routine can dampen these.
Yet I crave to be spiritual and to be disciplined. I love praying, and studying the Bible, but I wouldn’t say I ever do it in a daily, routine way.
However, there is something that I do daily – blipfoto, is a daily photo journal which challenges you to find a moment of beauty every day. Lydie (whose story you can read below) introduced it to me and, since starting it nearly 3 years ago, my outlook on the world has been transformed.
A photo captures a moment, and when my day has been broken down into moments, it’s less of a drag of work and housework, longing for the extraordinary – instead I find beauty in the ordinary.
I also reflect on my day and record 3 things I am grateful for, similar perhaps to the Examen, which I have longed to have the spiritual discipline to do daily.
Blipfoto has taught me to treasure moments, to hold time, to realise there is beauty in the mundane, to cultivate gratefulness, each photo a prayer of thanks.
Perhaps my spiritual life is a little more in focus than I realise.
Over the last few years, I’ve discovered that God speaks to me through my camera.
Walking and praying, camera in hand, sharpens my focus. God will often draw my eye to something I would have otherwise missed. He’ll speak to me through images that become prophetic, drawing out the extraordinary in the ordinary, taking me deeper into worship, gratitude and intimacy.
Images will often take on greater depths the more I meditate and pray on them.
With my camera, I feel God helps me to call out His beauty in places and people that seem ugly or hopeless.
He gives me new eyes, His eyes, calling forth His Kingdom with each pressing of the shutter – each click an ‘AMEN’ to the beauty God has created and the hope He has planted.
The more I walk and pray with my camera, the more the lines are blurred between prayer, worship, gratitude. Sometimes the photography is a heart-cry for change, for more of Him in what I’m seeing, sometimes it’s a response to His creation or love.
Photography, for me, has become fundamental in my life with Jesus. When I look through my photos at the end of the day, it’s like discovering gifts from Him; little treasures and nuggets waiting to be discovered.
I love that God communicates in such an array of ways, and communicates with us how He’s created us. How has God made you? Are there new and creative ways He may be wanting to speak to you?
