in 1996 photographer Charles O’Rear was driving  through Napa Valley north of San Francisco when a   particular landscape caught his eye it was a green  hillside sloping and smooth with a few wildflowers   dotting the grass at the bottom of the hill or  rear was struck by the beauty of that peaceful   scene so he did what any good photographer  would do he pulled over lined up a picture   in the resulting shot the lush green of the hill  is framed perfectly by the bright blue sky with   just enough wispy white clouds to add another  layer of color and texture if you look closely

you can even see the lines in the hillside where a  lawn mower has recently done its symmetrical work   pleased by his excursion or rear packed up his  gear went on his way he had no way of knowing that   he’d just taken what would become the most viewed  photograph of all time you see a few years later   the Microsoft company commissioned the rights to  arears picture now named bliss and designers set   the picture as the default background for their  new operating system and by the time Windows XP

was retired Microsoft estimated that bliss had  been viewed by billions of people around the   world more than even the most famous paintings in  history including the Mona Lisa one of my favorite   features of the Psalms is the pictures that they  paint like Charles arere the the psalmist’s were   experts at creating pictures and except that they  didn’t use a paintbrush that they use cameras not   no not cameras they use words as an example Psalm  107 celebrates the friendship and the faithfulness

of God it’s a beloved hymn of Thanksgiving for  his deliverance in the section from verses 4   through 32 we can find forward pictures for  biblical camera pictures of circumstances faced   by God’s people along their journey the first  picture is that of a desert it is a landscape   and this landscape happens to be a desert it’s  described in verses four through nine of Psalm   107 and you can read the word picture painted by  the psalmist here’s what it says they wandered in   the wilderness in a desolate way they found no  city to dwell in hungry and thirsty their soul

fainted in them now the Bible tells us that life  for Christians and life for all of us who are   God followers can sometimes be like being in the  desert we lose our way we get into dry wilderness   we don’t understand what the meaning is this is  true for those who don’t know God but sometimes   even after we come to know God we can fall back  into sort of a self absorbents that puts us in   the same place for some the desert is loneliness  others are lost in the cycle of routine futility   and still others become dislocated in the desert  they get caught up in affluence which turns out

to be a land drier and thirstier than they ever  expected The Wanderers trudged through the sand   without hope or Wow doubt without help and they  seek true spiritual meaning that always seems   to elude them the psalmist paints this picture  of people lost in a desert what a picture of   hopelessness and helplessness that is and that’s  unfortunately where many people are right now and   this whole pandemic that we’ve been through has  just exaggerated that experience in their life   well the psalmist paints another picture and this  one is the picture of prison he said sometimes