Friday Photo: The Gate of Heaven

by Joe Thorn on October 24, 2008

thejourney2
I was at the Acts 29 Bootcamp/Lead Conference this past week – without my camera. So I shot this with my cameraphone. It’s the front doors of The Journey in Saint Louis.

{ 8 comments }

1 Dan Alcatara October 25, 2008 at 7:29 am

That’s quite good for a cameraphone picture.

2 Joe Thorn October 25, 2008 at 7:56 am

Thanks Dan. The Blackberry Pearl does a good job.

3 Chad November 6, 2008 at 6:47 pm

As a BB pearl owner myself, I can’t seem to get a photo this crisp with it. Do you employ any tricks when taking photos?

4 Joe Thorn November 6, 2008 at 8:34 pm

I keep the “lens” free of lint before shooting, hold still, and have to have good light – or I get nothing. Then in post, I convert to black and white, maybe bump contrast and add a vignette. You can actually do all that inside Flickr’s built-in editing software (PicNik).

5 Trevor Cairney November 8, 2008 at 9:05 pm

Nice photo but was there a theological point intended? Should we be pleased or bemused that the front door of the church has these words on it? It doesn’t fit well with my theology of church, have you read it differently?

6 Joe Thorn November 8, 2008 at 9:58 pm

Trevor, it’s just a photo, no irony or message intended. The building is (I believe) an old Catholic church building that The Journey bought.

So the “house of God/gate of heaven” thing came with the building, but for the record – as you probably know – that is something Jacob said in Gen 28 after his encounter with God.

“…’Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’ 16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.’ 17 And he was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’”

That the church (not a building, of course) can be called the house of God is clearly biblical (1 Pet 2 for example). And I believe we can also think of the church as the gate (also perhaps translated court) of heaven in that the church is where we encounter God via word and sacrament. Much more could be said.

I think we can be generous with that kind of idea, and you’ll find that historically even Protestants from the Reformed tradition draw pretty quick parallels between Jacob’s words in gen 28 and the church.

7 Trevor Cairney November 9, 2008 at 5:40 am

Thanks for your response Joe. Of course I agree that the people of God can be called the house of God; but not the bricks and mortar. I suspect that the designers of the old church building weren’t necessarily thinking of the people (but I’ll try to be generous). The things we write on the walls of our church buildings, the names we give them, and the comments we place on our wayside pulpits say a lot about our theology. Thanks for taking the time to respond, I enjoy your blog when I get a chance to read it.

8 Rob November 28, 2008 at 9:55 pm

Joe,
Great picture! I had a Blackberry Pearl once….it was a far better camera (and alarm clock) than it was a phone. So bad, in fact, that I went *back* to a Treo! It’s not half the camera the Pearl was, but it’s twice the phone!

Thanks for sharing!

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