Remembering the Five-Minute Rule

"Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise." (Richard Rohr)

You don't have to be a professional photographer to experience one of the incredible highs of what can happen when you focus and click on a scene you've seen many times before: Wonder. Just when you think you've seen it all, a different angle of the sun, the time of day, the shading from a gazillion variations of clouds, can all bring a speechless sense of wow to something you thought you knew very well.

That's what happened during a recent visit to the Maine coast. I have walked over this bridge countless times, but depending on the time of day, the same scene can produce an entirely different, jaw-dropping feast for the eyes. 

"O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic and glorious and excellent is Your name in all the earth!"

(Psalm 8:9, Amplified)

God is forever giving a greater glimpse of the beauty and goodness of Himself...if only we will look for it. If only we will pause from our determination to get from point A to point B. If only we will take it all in and be thankful for life and breath and everything He provides instead of just observing with a "Huh, cool!" and moving on.

Photography of the familiar can produce another kind of wonder: Remembering what really matters. Although the lighting was different, and the hues more golden this time, the same setting brought a much-needed flashback to another time four years ago while passing over this same bridge, and in a similar speechless sense of wow....

"Life is crazy, and time is precious. But everyone's got five minutes to chill... 

Five minutes on the commute with no music, no talk radio 

Five minutes to pause at the smooth-as-glass stream instead of walking on by 

Five minutes to get up from your deadline, step outside, and breathe deeply 

Five minutes while the kids are outside playing 

Five minutes without earbuds, and phone-checking, and social media, and... 

Five minutes...to be filled with simply being thankful for all that God has done for you and is to you. Which, invariably, can lead to a lot more than five minutes. 

Cultivating thanks-filled mini-vacations throughout the day can be one of the most wonderfully contagious, Gospel-inquiring things we can ever spread to those around us. ... Participant side effects likely to include attitude adjustment.