Mist arising

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Image of the day – 141

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.

This photo was taken from the Gloucester Road, between Cirencester and the village of Stratton a mile to the north. It was the 15th of January 2025, at nearly five in the evening. The sun had already set so the air was cooling after a mild day with good sunshine and the moist air above the grass in the fields was condensing as mist.

The faded warm colour of the sky, the stark blackness of the skeletal trees, and rising mist make a scene I just had to capture. I had only my phone with me, but for wide-field, distant views that’s good enough. There’s a hint of mystery here too, we can only guess what might be hidden in the most misty areas.

And I couldn’t help thinking about the parallels with people. Before birth we are hidden, like the darkness before the dawn (you need to imagine a country dawn, not a city dawn, no streetlights, no artificial light). After birth we are visible to all and we change, growing in size, growing in knowledge, growing too in wisdom – hopefully. Most of our life is lived in the full light of day. We have a job, we raise a family, we interact with others as friends, or family, or perhaps sometimes even as enemies.

Lives, like days, begin, run their course, and then become evening. In the evening of life, the pace slows, there are memories that may be well-defined, or sometimes, like the mist, our memories hide things from us. The light fades, and when we die we enter darkness like the night.

Or do we? People have discussed what happens after death, every generation that has lived has wondered about this. Some people are certain that the darkness of death is the end of all sensation. And they are right, of course. But might there be other possibilities? Every generation has also held untestable ideas. Is there a God? If so, what is he/she like? Answers to untestable questions are not wrong, they are just not capable of being tested.

It has always seemed quite sensible to me to live my life as if what I do matters during the night of my life as well as during its day. But also, the teaching of Jesus is very logically sound, not testable but also, as far as I can see, internally coherent and free of self contradiction. That quality amazes me, I believe his claims to be true, testable or not. He has convinced me. Maybe he has convinced you too, or maybe not. We have that freedom, and we cannot persuade one another using the scientific approach, good as that is for studying more measurable and therefore testable matters.

See also:

• Truth and facts – JHM
• Want to learn to follow Jesus? – JHM
• Why on earth would I follow Jesus? – JHM

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