One of my favorite movies is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty starring Ben Stiller and Sean Penn. Stiller plays the main character Walter Mitty who is on a mission to find the photojournalist Sean O’Connell played by Penn. In one particular scene, Walter and Sean are sitting together on a hillside as Sean waits to get a picture of a rare snow leopard.
Sean: They call the snow leopard the ghost cat–never lets itself be seen.
Walter: Ghost cat?
Sean: Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
Sean finally gets his opportunity but at the moment when the cat is in the viewfinder he holds back and doesn’t take the picture. He then explains to a baffled Walter that he wanted to be in the moment and not let the camera get in the way. (1)
How often do we neglect to take in the moment and instead scurry to take a picture? Moved by a sunrise or a sunset, a lake or mountain, a moose or a leopard, we try to capture it in a photo. We take a spiritual moment and try to digitize it only to find that when we look at the image later the feeling is lost. I suspect most of us have been disappointed by the response of our friends to a photo that marked a significant event in our lives. The problem is that our photo albums are haunted by ghosts that cannot be conjured up by a séance. We shouldn’t be faulted, however, for our attempts at capturing the sublime because it is natural for us to want to preserve moments of spiritual significance. Since God spoke creation into existence, the world is made up of His creational rhetoric and every moment in nature is a divine spoken word with an unmistakable spiritual accent.
I think a blessing is like that. We all understand physical acts of service. Businesses and governments engage in them all the time. But these acts don’t rise to the level of blessing until they have been touched by the Holy Spirit. We can look at a picture of a government worker handing out food and a person serving meals at a mission and be unable to tell if they are acts of service or blessings because you can’t photograph a ghost.
It’s interesting that even those who have no religious background know the difference between aid and blessing. Aid fills a stomach, blessing feeds a soul. One nourishes for several hours, the other for a lifetime. A blessing is an unexpected letter from a different kingdom postmarked with the Holy Spirit. A blessing is an unsolicited gift that meets the needs of both the heart and body.
After Pentecost, despite their small numbers, the early followers of Christ became a powerful social force because all their activities were infused with Spirit. Christianity grew because the pagan world saw their works not as acts of service demanded by a deity but as blessings unconditionally conferred by a loving God.
The government serves the poor, but we need to take it one step further and bless them. Food stamps fill the belly but without blessing the soul dies of malnutrition. Homeless shelters keep out the rain, but blessing irrigates lives with living water. Distributing blankets and coats keeps the body warm but blessing ignites the flame of the Holy Spirit. We channel God’s love when we bless others.
When we take pictures of things that elicit spiritual feelings, we end up with a photo album of images but not moments. When we offer aid to needy people but don’t bless them, we deprive them of a spiritual encounter. Maybe God doesn’t want us to be famous for photographing the rare snow leopard but rather wants us to savor a moment with a “ghost cat” because beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
(1) httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmB8MZvWASo
Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash
