Bearing Witness
Tonight, I stood at the window watching the sunset and tried — well failed, really — to capture it on my phone.
Every time I thought I had it, the sky grew prettier. More orange. More purple. And because I have the world’s stubbornest phone — which pretends to be too full, storage-wise, each time I open the camera app; but won’t allow me to delete anything (that’s a rant for another day) — by the time the light faded, I was frustrated and realized I hadn’t even enjoyed the sunset at all. I’d been too busy trying to keep it.
In the shower afterward (where I do all my best ruminating), I scolded myself a bit: You write about presence. About noticing. And you missed it.
But then my thoughts wandered, and I began thinking about the Gospel writers (abrupt change, I know…); about John and Matthew following Jesus, watching miracle after miracle unfold. I wondered what it felt like to be the ones tasked with writing it all down.
Did they ever wish they weren’t the scribes?
Did they ever want to just stand there, empty-handed, and bear witness — without the pressure to record, remember, retell?
Then, that phrase — bear witness — rattled between my ears.
And it was there, in the steam and stillness, that another thought arrived: Maybe the picture isn’t always about the sunset.
Maybe sometimes we reach for the camera because we want someone to bear witness to our life.
Not because our lives are sacred in the way His was, but because ordinary lives still long to be seen.
Because the truth is, my day leading up to the sunset… well, it kind of stunk. It was a quiet, wearing kind of hard. The kind that doesn’t leave marks, but leaves you feeling unseen. And maybe the urge to capture the evening sky was less about performance, and more about proof. Proof that something good still happened here. That this day counted.
It made me think differently about the photos I scroll past so easily. The not-so-appealing dinners. The out-of-focus pets. The mundane moments. The ones I’m tempted to dismiss with an eye-roll.
What if that picture is the only place someone feels seen today?
What if it’s not vanity, but vulnerability? An unspoken way of saying: I was here. Please, notice.
Scripture is full of witnesses. People who wrote things down not to draw attention to themselves, but to say: This mattered. God was present. Remember this.
Maybe our small acts of documenting aren’t always distractions from presence. Maybe sometimes they’re acts of hope. A reaching outward. An offering.
I don’t know that I’ll stop fumbling for my phone when the sky turns pink. But tonight, I’m choosing a little more grace for myself, and for the woman behind the next picture I see.
Because being witnessed matters.
