Photo and Commentary ©2025 by Shelley Schurch
Sunday, September 28, 2025
This is probably the most mundane photo I’ve shared in my years of contributing once a week to our church’s Daily Photo Parables! Please don’t spend any time scrutinizing this photo, trying to find my reason for choosing to post it. I’ll tell you. It will be much easier that way!
On a beautiful summer day (just before it turned to autumn), we were driving through the Skagit Valley and stopped at the seasonal country market, Snow Goose Produce. Before I purchased peaches, nectarines, and plums, I turned to snap a photo of the pumpkin field across the road. I think the sky was so blue, and the day so delightful, that I had to quickly document it. (The store was closing in five minutes.)
When I scrolled through my photos yesterday, I discovered something unexpected in the bottom righthand corner – I didn’t know I was in the picture.
And yes, that reminds me of Jesus.
My earliest Bible stories had texture to them — flannel. Each week I watched as my Sabbath School teacher moved flannel people and animals and buildings and trees and fire and water and all manner of objects around on a big flannel board, telling the story as she provided this action. I could always tell which person was Jesus; He wore burgundy fabric draped around His long white gown. And looked friendly.
I just now remembered that the very first Bible story I witnessed had a different, grittier texture to it – sand. I think this story made a lasting impression on me because Mrs. Zumwalt, our teacher, had rigged up a small pulley system with which to reenact the scene of Jesus ascending up to heaven, from our classroom sandbox. I was very young and I was amazed.
I graduated from sandboxes and flannel boards to Bible story books with colorful illustrations; Jesus still dressed in burgundy and white.
My real graduation happened many years later when I had an epiphany. The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary has several definitions for epiphany; the one that fits my experience is, “an illuminating discovery, realization.”
During two decades and more of Bible stories, I didn’t know I was in the picture.
My epiphany came when I read about Jesus agonizing in Gethsemane, sweating blood and crying out to His Father to, “if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42 NKJV)
It was there that He made His final decision to choose the cross. I was in the picture; so were you. So that we could choose eternal life, He chose death, risking eternal separation from His Father.
I always enjoy nativity scenes, whether they’re in books, on front lawns in December, or on mantelpieces. They come in such varieties nowadays. (I must admit I squinted my eyes and furrowed my brow a bit when I saw a nativity set in which all of the figures, even the Babe in the manger, were snowmen.)
No matter a nativity set’s style, it usually groups together Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, shepherds, wise men, and perhaps an angel or two, to portray the Son of God humbling Himself to become Son of Man. I didn’t know that I belong in this picture, too.
Paul assures us that Christ Jesus . . .
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2:6, 7 NIV)
“Made himself nothing” is a rather stark way of describing the Incarnation!
At the cradle, at the cross, we are in the picture. That’s gospel.
It reminds me of a gospel song with a cheerful melody which fits its good news. J. Edwin McConnell (known as “Smilin’ Ed McConnell”) wrote the lyrics, and James B. Coats composed the music. It was published in 1910 and used widely in tent revivals and camp meetings. The first verse and chorus sing like this:
I am happy today and the sun shines bright,
The clouds have been rolled away;
For the Savior said, whosoever will
May come with Him to stay.
Chorus:
“Whosoever,” surely meaneth me,
Surely meaneth me, O surely meaneth me;
“Whosoever,” surely meaneth me,
“Whosoever,” meaneth me.
We know which Bible verse McConnell is harkening back to:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16 KJV)
Yes, “whosoever” surely meaneth me, and surely meaneth you, too! We’re in the picture because we’re in the heart of God.