Self-Evident
“It is self-evident that the self-evident is not always self-evident.”
A few years ago a little light turned on in my head when a chaplain, mentor/ friend used the word self-evident. All of a sudden some things I’d been wrestling with in my thinking became very clear. It was as though the truth had been staring me in the face all along, but, because the answers were so common sense, so self-evident, I’d missed seeing them. Just as common sense is not so common these days, neither are some of the self-evident truths of this world. For example, it is self- evident that air surrounds us, but when was the last time you thought to yourself, “Yep, sure enough; I’m surrounded by air and without it I’d be in big trouble!”? Denial and avoidance are two ways most of us deal with the thorny issues of life. We deny the obvious. We avoid talking to the doctor because we’re afraid of the truth. Yet, won’t you agree that we would spare ourselves a lot of pain in the long run if we would simply face the truth? Like an ant living at the base of Mt. Everest, it is easy to get so focused on our little ant hill that we miss the bigger picture. If I may, I’d like to encourage you to lift your eyes off your current circumstances, whatever they may be, and focus on some of life’s bigger self-evident truths which, like air, are easy to overlook. Will you think with me as I share some self-evident spiritual truths I see? As a hospice chaplain (working with the terminally ill), and as a professional landscape photographer, I see life differently than most. I see both beauty and heartache, almost on a daily basis. And, from time to time, I see incredible faith, hope, and courage. As a photographer, I’m aware that if I can find the right matte and frame to put around a photograph, it will make the photograph look twice as pretty. The right framing enhances the beauty of the picture inside. In like manner, I believe that God has put a frame around each of our lives, and that is death. At first we hate the frame, but once we accept it, the picture inside, life itself, becomes much more precious and beautiful. Life is full of so many wonderful things if we but have eyes to see; things that are so self-evident that, just maybe, we’ve missed seeing them.
“ W e know ourselves so little ...” —Pascal
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