The Fear Of Death (I Lost My Sunglasses…AGAIN!)
#vanlife #landscapephotography #robertanthony #whitesands #martinluther
Alright, so this post is two fold. There is a funny story at the end AND the gallery of images from my first stop out here. I figure it’s the best way to share. If you like the gallery, will you share this post with your friends and family?
You can text ‘em a link, put it on you Facebook or whatever other media you use.
Photos at the end of the post!
Yesterday, while I was in the White Sands National Park, I was alone for the most part. The weather had calmed down. It was unbelievably windy the day before. When I was shooting the sunset the sand was hitting me with such force it stung the skin.
At any rate, I was sitting in the cool of the morning (it had radically cooled off since the day before), drinking coffee, I was reading my bible, and then as I always do, I finish it off with my devotional book from Martin Luther called “Faith Alone”.
Can I quote something from it for you to consider?
“For believers, death is not death but simply sleep. When death no longer brings dread and fear-when it no longer has sting and power-it can no longer be called death. Consequently, when faith becomes stronger, death becomes proportionately weaker. Lack of faith, on the other hand, increases the bitterness of death”.
He said this because he was talking about Enoch. Genesis 5:24 says “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”
In the text following this, Luther talks about how the Old Testament believers never called it death per se. Instead, it is referred to simply as “sleep”. They believed they were going to sleep to wake again in eternity.
We have that promise too through our simple faith in Jesus Christ as having been here, dying for us and then rising again.
We go to sleep. To wake in a world to which even my photography today of the places, for example, you will see below, cannot begin to compare.
Yet even a vast number of “believers” I know show such fear of death in many different ways. Those of which I have documented in previous posts.
I type this today from a McDonalds parking lot getting ready to head to the Bisti Badland Wilderness. I stopped for coffee and to use their WiFi to get caught up on work.
Remember, this is New Mexico, a state still bombarding it’s residents with messages of death, “mask up”, avoid people, and so on.
Every McDonalds in the area maintains only drive thru service.
It’s like a third world country in many places here. Almost surreal.
I order my coffee and pull up to the first drive through window. Underneath a 5 inch or so slit in the plexiglass the gal pushes through the debit card machine. She’s wearing gloves and two masks. I can’t even hear her words.
I move up after paying to the second window to pick up my coffee. Under a similar passage slot, another gal pushes out my coffee in a huge long and low rubber maid style tray from which I have to grab my coffee.
I may make the case that it’s the fear of death that will cause people to willingly go along with such nonsense.
Even more so when they will STILL follow edicts and orders of say, Gretchen Whitmer, who just a few days ago was caught at the famous Landshark in East Lansing, partying with her staff and friend, ALL of whom were not obeying the edicts they all attempt to enforce their residents to obey. Hyporcite to the 1000th power. (Michigan, WHY HAVE YOU NOT DONE SOMETHING TO RECALL THIS EVIL WOMAN?)
A couple of folks I have met on the trail have said we should be obeying such people while criticizing Florida, Texas, Georgia, and others, for their willingness to genocidally kill it’s residents through their freedom declarations.
All I can figure is the “fear of death”.
I think of CS Lewis’ Screwtape letters. Screwtape addresses this issue with Wormwood about the subjects (the human) fear of death. (Wormwood is a demon with an assigned human). The book is a dramatization of the way in which Lewis sees/saw Satan and his minions. You know, how they work on us.
Screwtape is instructing wormwood at one point on how easy it is to work the human based on this fear of death.
How easy it is for them to use doctors who “lie, lie, and then lie some more, convincing the subject they will be able to skirt death, when all along, the eventual day comes that they too will find their lives end”.
He makes the further case (and I have watched this time and time again) that through this fear, using the doctors to promote the lie, they are able to get the human to avoid life, to avoid living in peace and freedom because they are so afraid of dying. They will do anything to avoid it.
I believe this was the case in my McDonalds experience.
How many of us willingly deny ourselves the joy and happiness life can bring through our fear of death?
Far too many.
I have thought about that much lately. I suppose in the end this scenario and many more like it seem to expose a couple of things. Those being the power of the electronic age with it’s propaganda puke being spoon feed to a people who willingly ingest it 24/7 through a corrupt and lying (by their own admissions as caught on Project Vertas' videos time and time again) media and social platforms to which they are addicted combined with their fear of just about anything life may throw at them. At the top of the list, 2nd only to public speaking, the fear of death as aptly brought to my attention through Martin Luther’s writings.
When humans look to government, doctors, teachers, elected representatives, parents, or friends for answers, they will always come up short. Ah, to get back to the days when we were not bombarded with promises and products that are lies which feed upon on our fears or our desire for quick and easy fixes.
Being in these vast expanses of land, often alone in the silence of the morning and evening, I am reminded how very small I really am. God built all of this with a word. And I am worried or fearful of what exactly? The older I get, I find it to be less and less.
Well, in closing, here is my little story.
While shooting the sunset in the dunes, WAAAAAY out there, I realized when I got back to the Walmart to head to bed for the night that I didn’t have my sunglasses.
Sunglasses that I JUST BOUGHT a few days back for this trip. I didn’t buy the cheapies, and not the really expensive ones. A middle of the road pair. They are nice.
I was mad at myself. I am always losing sunglasses. I know this. Which is why I generally won’t spend more than about 20 bucks. Although this time I went for $68 bucks.
I was going to let it be, but upon reviewing my video, I was able to determine approximately where they would be.
I decided I would make the trek back out there to find them and while so doing would see what kind of photography I could do with just my phone. I mean really, what else did I have on the docket for the morning?
What a grand time walking in the utter silence and coolness of the early sun swept dunes. Just me and the Lord.
The images in this gallery are from that walk about.
I hope you enjoy, and again, share it around if you feel so inclined.
Comments welcomed below.
I am off into a vast wilderness today and will be out there for a number of days. I will post again when I return to civilization.
~rob out
PS I am still hoping to get a last minute permit for the Zion Wilderness Subway trail. Man, I want to photograph there. Wish me luck on this one!
