Every Life Has a Decisive Moment, and God Is the Photographer

Imagine your life in one shot. Every waking moment of your life, leading up to one perfect photo. One.

Where every part of the frame is filled with the story of how you got there, and what you did with your life. Today it’s a photograph. A few centuries ago it would’ve been a painting, or a sculpture. But the moment is the same.

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Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine if God were a photographer. He’d have full control of time and space, so he could go back into any point in the past or the future. He’d see through entire worlds, so he could shoot as close or as wide as possible. He’d be able to go to any moment in time and make a photograph composed exactly how he wanted it. But because he’s God–this being above our 3D dimension–if he has a certain picture in mind, he’s also able to influence the past and the future to get that image. 

And because he’s a photographer, he knows this one truth that every photographer knows: the frame doesn’t show you everything. It just shows you what someone decided to keep. Everything outside the edge of the crop, those disappear. Only the photographer knows what went on outside the four corners of that photograph.

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For example, if he wanted to photograph a man’s shining moment saving a child from a wildfire. Then he would’ve started by planting those trees a century ago.

If he wanted to photograph a soldier coming home to his family, then he would’ve first had to create imperfect leaders who lead people to war. His allies photos might have been on the battlefield. But only to show the ones who did come home what they were holding when they finally held it.

If he wanted to photograph the downfall of all evil and the triumph of goodness, then evil would have to be a formidable opponent.

Now, in the moment the soldier didn’t know he was living toward a photograph. You see, he had free will, and so he made choices: to enlist, to write letters to home, to keep moving  when he wanted to stop, without knowing which moment would be the one. And that’s exactly how it was intended. 

It can’t be staged. You need to have free will. The subject has to move freely through life. That’s the only way to capture that they were really alive.

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Some people’s defining photograph has already been taken. They’re living in the aftermath of their best moment and don’t know it yet. Others are still in the middle of the story. Their trees are still being planted, or they’re still walking through a war, without any sense of what it’s building toward.

And maybe God takes multiple photos - multiple moments that turn into one contact sheet of your entire life.

But in this thought experiment, one thing is for certain: there will be some photographs that will never be seen by any living person.

Some people’s greatest moments will be when they’re quietly living life. Moments that are witnessed by no one - not a camera, a crowd, not even a friend in the room. But that moment mattered anyway, and the frame exists somewhere even if no human eye ever finds it.

Maybe that’s the whole point. If the photograph only matters because someone sees it, then were you ever really living for yourself, or was it all a performance? The photograph that no one sees might be the one that proves the life was real.

In essence, every waking moment of your life leads up to a photograph. It might be one taken by another human being, or it might be one that no living person will ever get to see. The frame is already composed. The only question is whether you’re willing to be in it.