Our photo collages

Each of the three “cycling” photo collages you see on our website’s header tell a story of their own:

• “Our story“—these snapshots represent our hopes and dreams and how they’ve changed—the Eiffel Tower in Paris, our storybook wedding, playing in the snow with my oldest daughter, our two oldest kids bumming on the beach near Barcelona, the pre-9-11 Manhattan skyline (taken by Margie Browning), a welcome home for our oldest son, an Alaskan waterfall, our family of six near Rocky Mountain National Park…
• “‘Their story“—these snapshots represent our world’s deep hunger and need and how we’re learning to open our eyes and ears to their reality—the sun masked by a dark forest, a jaundiced American baby under the ‘blue light,’ the front gate of Auschwitz boasting in German ‘work makes you free’ (Wikipedia), a tombstone from Bewick Church in Northumbria, UK, proclaiming in Latin “eternal life,” a Rwandan refugee camp (Wikipedia), a hand-scrawled appeal in Spanish from a homeless person, and Catalan graffiti decrying ‘oppression’…
• “Sharing their story“—these snapshots represent true stories where someone’s deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet—the ruins of an influential Celtic monastery on Holy Island, UK, a campfire burning, Mother Teresa (Wikipedia), the Civil Rights March on Washington (Wikipedia), our kids’ eight feet, three friends shoving off together into Berner’s Bay, Alaska (taken by Justin Nail), and a shot of an highway, reflecting the fact that this whole process is nothing if not a journey (taken by Dustin Shryock)…

These three stories reflect the three emphases of Sharing Their Story — listening to our own story, learning the stories of those in need around us and living out a new story in which our own deep gladness and the deep hunger of the world meet.