This past Mother's Day, we had the pleasure of gathering together with our three daughters, their husbands and our five precious granddaughters. After a lot of family commotion, we were all asked to gather together in one room.

As I took a seat, it was just nice to look around and see all the family gathered together. It was then that I slowly gazed around the room taking in one-by-one my wife, our daughters, the grandchildren and our sons-in-law. Life was good! I remember taking one of those mental snapshots we all take at times such as these.

Life is rich, but…

And then, the announcement came. Our daughters presented to Susan, my wife, their Mother's Day present for her. They had produced an hour-long video program from over 800 digital photos about our family. They added a sound track of all of our favorite family music, sentimental tunes that we had grown to love together over the years.

Picture after picture would bring out highlights of our lives together, from a hospital birth room, a first walk, a day at the park, the face of a grandkid glistening with tears, goofy faces that weren't so goofy now, Thanksgiving meals, great-grandparents and pictures taken when nobody was supposed to be looking. Surprise!

For an hour we strolled down memory lane, reminded by pictures and melodies how rich life can be if we can only get over those bumps along the way. My wife and I both had more than a few lumps in our throats, and our eyes glistened with tears of joy. Such a flood of memories! It was so very rich.

What a stark contrast jumped out at me the very next morning when I was catching up on some back newspapers. Edmund Sanders, staff reporter for the Los Angeles Times, wrote "In Focus, A Nation's Mourning," which appeared on May 5. Unlike the day before, there was no music, but only the painful and sobering reality of life's images for far too many in this present age of man.

An open shutter of woes

Through Sanders' lens on Iraq, I was taken into a small, crowded commercial storefront in the troubled city of Baghdad. He took his readers into a photo lab run by a Christian Iraqi named Farouq. At the age of 37, this gentleman's eyes have seen a lot of photos.

Like all photo labs his work used to center on graduations, weddings and baby photos. After Saddam Hussein's fall from power, for a brief time there was a springlike condition of various aspects of life budding for the first time in a long while. During this time, computers became more extant in Iraq, and everyone wanted pictures for what they hoped would be the dawning of a new society.

But these days, Sanders reports that Farouq now has a more somber duty as "his tiny photo shop has become an open shutter on Iraq's woes." Farouq sadly explained, "Almost all my work is now focused on martyrs." He is speaking of the civilian casualties of this country's violence. Farouq lamented, "This job is my mirror to know what is going on in my country. And things are getting worse."

His work of recent date included the photo of a little girl with a stuffed animal at her feet. She and her parents were killed by a car bomb. With his head shaking in despair, he explained to Sanders that the photo had been taken just a few days before and was now going into the processor to be preserved for next of kin.

Farouq's coworker, Munim, mentions one recent request regarding a 3-or 4-year-old boy wearing an orange basketball tank shirt. He was proudly seated atop a plastic tricycle, his scraped knees hugging the sides. Through the magic of computer software, the technician transports the image into a fantasy world in which he is joined by Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse with the backdrop of a white picket fence, while Dumbo the Elephant is soaring high above. Indeed, this masterpiece of a make-believe existence is worlds apart from the violence of what his everyday life was like. The identifying caption merely says, "The Happy Martyr," for the boy, too, is now dead.

Imprinted on my mind

When asked how he died, Munim replied sharply, "I don't ask about the details. I don't want to know!" The reporter surmises it's too painful to delve further. Even though the work is depressing, Faruoq and Munim realize they cannot turn customers away.

They never know what's on the film their customers bring in, because the customers feel if they tell, then their film might be rejected. It is not until the technicians insert the negatives into their equipment that the stories unfold in all their anguish, be it a car bombing, an accidental shooting, a decapitated body or the corpse of a man tortured and killed by an electric drill.

Sanders relates how the horror has transformed Farouq: "At first, the images moved him to tears or turned his stomach. Now they've become oddly normal, because there are so many horrendous pictures."

So Farouq and Munim steadily work with their computer to magically enhance the photos of the now-dead subjects with a mix of sunsets, waterfalls, flowers, clouds and religious memorabilia as backdrops that transport the dead and the grieving into a different world. Their customers take the results and place them on their walls at home, trying to remember a different and better time.

But recently, business has been changing. No longer do they deal principally with pictures of "the martyrs," but rather with passport photos. Why? So many are trying to leave Iraq! In fact, when he can save up enough money, Farouq is planning to join the exodus.

He says that since the violence escalated a year ago, business is down by 75 percent due to the crippling effect of curfews. He hopes to open a photo lab in a far less stressful environment. But he worried aloud about "how this is affecting my psyche, because these images are imprinted on my mind." If a picture is worth a thousand words, just imagine the length of story that has been written in Farouq's mind through all the vivid photos.

A picture worth a thousand years

How then do we bring together the photo display that my family saw on Mother's Day and the horrible images that Farouq is most likely still processing at this moment?

Well, there is one picture that supersedes anything mentioned to this point. It is a picture worth 1,000 years! It is the pictorial collage of the promised Kingdom of God coming to this earth as caught by the open shutter of Scripture.

Can you stay with me a moment? And don't worry, it won't be 800 scriptures or take an hour like our home video. But I will tell you this much before we get started. It's worth every ounce of your life's devotion! So where does our millennial collage begin?

Let's start with the subjects of Farouq's inner turmoil, the little martyrs. Isaiah 65:20 describes a future time when, "No more shall an infant from there live but a few days; nor an old man that has not fulfilled his days…" Picture that!

Zechariah 8:4 adds color with, "Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each one with his staff in his hand because of great age. The streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets." Picture that!

Then let's add Micah 4:1-4 as it outlines in vivid detail how "the mountain of the L ord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains [nations and governments], and shall be exalted above the hills, and peoples shall flow to it. Many nations shall come and say, ‘Come and let us go up to the mountain of the L ord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways and we shall walk in His paths.'

"For out of Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of the L ord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between many peoples and rebuke strong nations afar off; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid."

Let's push the pause button on this one, because it's one long roll. Picture all of that! One frame at a time, please.

But there is more to add to the collage of millennial snapshots. Amos 9:13 speaks of a time ahead when "the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine and all the hills shall flow with it." Picture that!

Isaiah 19:23-25 lays out a frame of geopolitical harmony, "In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria… In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria—a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the L ord of hosts shall bless, saying, ‘Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.'"

Iraq now occupies the ancient land of Assyria and most Arab nations think of Israel as an adversary. Picture the change!

A picture for those tough times

Just two more brief snapshots of the Kingdom and we've got the collage done for now. But don't forget, it's not really over, because it stretches for eternity.

Remember earlier, when I mentioned tears? Well, ours were tears of joy on Mother's Day. But there are tears of pain and grief that need to be tended. Our Father in heaven has an encouraging snapshot for us to carry deep in the recesses of our hearts and minds. When the going gets so tough that we can barely stand it, we can think of this picture.

Revelation 21:4 grants us the moving photo of a God who will "wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying." Now, picture that, and hold on to it real tight!

And now the last snapshot to delicately place in the collage, because it's for Farouq and for all of God's children who have seen more than a human being ought to see. Remember how Farouq said the images of all that he had developed in his photo lab had been "imprinted on his mind"? Well, let's complete the collage with Isaiah 65:17, which offers the encouraging picture of God creating "new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind." Picture that!

Until that time ahead when our good Father summons His entire family to gather together before Him with a deeper joy than we can now know, let's allow Paul's admonition to be the guiding light to fulfill the column title, "this is the way, walk in it" (Isaiah 30:21).

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

Now, picture that; and let's make sure we have the same focus that God has.