Take a close look at the famous picture, Christmas in Berlin, 1963, Ian Berry/Magnum Photos (click button below to view). What is happening? What emotion is conveyed in the photo? How is emotion displayed here? Can you think of a time when you reacted similarly? Who all were there? How did you react? What were you feeling? What were the circumstances? Do you remember the date? What happened next? Take a few minutes to reflect on it. Don’t stop till you notice that you’re smiling at the flooding back memories. While you’re still in the ‘zone’ you might even want to get up to dig out some pictures taken at that time.
Due to copyright laws, photo cannot be posted on our website without permission. Please click the button to visit Ian Berry’s famous photo at Magnum Photos.
Because we live in a military-dense area with all branches of the within a few miles of one another here in southeastern Virginia, there are often newspaper front pages with return from deployment pics, often husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, roses in hand, posters, balloons, kissing, hugging, crying, laughing, all at once. Sometimes photographers catch the heart-melting moment when the returning dad gets to see his born-during-deployment baby for the first time. If there are older children, their exuberant leaping into returning arms is priceless to behold! At other times, there is an arranged surprise for the spouse and/or children that is caught on video and uploaded. Such privately public reunions! Words fail. But then, words are unnecessary. And if attempted, they would pale in comparison with the warm, life-affirming inrush of geysering feelings.
Airports, too, are prime real estate for taking in some highly emotional homecomings (don’t hang out in Departures! That is not what you want to see. Those tears, those emotions are heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching! Even if you have no idea who the people are! Or is that just me off blubbering in the corner?) But back to the really good stuff always just about to happen in the Arrivals terminal. Otherwise quiet, reserved folks stand, craning their necks down the long corridors filled with freshly disembarked passengers. The tension is palpable. The long-awaited target spotted, the shouting, the screaming, the crying, the jumping up and down, the balloon- and banner-waving, begin in earnest. Sometimes there is pandemonium as several groups simultaneously erupt, forgetting that there are others anywhere nearby (my apologies to any non-American readers if this exotic, rather unseemly phenomenon is [thankfully] unique to North America!)
I do have a sneaking suspicion that God reacts like that every morning as he watches us open our eyes to the new day he’s prepared for us. Now, that’s something to think about for tomorrow morning! PD
