Cathedral Bell Towers in Panama, and Real Church Family
The bell towers of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Panama City, Panama, against a stormy sky.
During our 2024 Panama trip, we visited the Metropolitan Cathedral one afternoon while we were walking around in Casco Viejo, and you can see photos from the interior of the cathedral in this post and also read more about its history.
The exterior of the cathedral was quite interesting, too. However, because of the rain, we did not spend all that much time looking at it. I did take a few quick photos of the exterior, however, and this one stood out to me.
As you can see, the clouds were thick that day, which explained the rain that we were getting. And I liked how the bell towers looked against the clouds. You can mainly see only one of the bell towers here, while the other is mostly obscured by the roof. But that other one looks a whole lot like this one.
But as we were looking to stay dry during the rain, we quickly moved on after I took this photo, wiping the raindrops from my camera lens.
See more from our Panama 2024 Trip!
Church Family
While this cathedral building is quite interesting both inside and out, to me it is just another reminder that the actual church is not the building, but rather the people that gather together. It does not take a great church building to have a great church. It just takes great people.
Of course, all of the people in the church are people just like you and me, people in need of salvation from a gracious God. So in that way, we are not great. But when we set our hearts to following God and serving each other, we can become a great church, showing our faith by the things that we do for God’s glory.
Worship services are a very important part of what a church does, but those are not the only things that a church does. I firmly believe that we draw closer together and build relationships through the other things that we do, from eating meals together, to going on retreats together, to trips like Lads to Leaders or Panama. Spending time together, talking, sharing experiences, working through difficulties, rejoicing, weeping, praying - all of those things move us from being church attenders, just sitting in a room together for an hour at a time, to a true church family, just like those Christians in the first century church.
Don’t just slip in and then slip out for worship services. Spend time growing the relationships needed for a real church family.
And yes, this is not the first time for this Blessings theme that have talked about church family, and it will probably not be the last. Because a church family is a huge blessing.
Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. - Acts 2:46-47 CSV
About the Photo
This photo actually turned out rather dark, as the camera tried to expose more for the sky than for the bell tower structures. Even though it was very cloudy, the clouds were still brighter than the architecture. Fortunately, I was able to compensate for that using the Raw file (see more at Steve’s Photography Tips), making the bell towers lighter while also bringing out the detail in the clouds.
I also knew early on that this would be a good black and white photo. After all, the bell towers were already white, and the clouds were gray, so there was not much color to begin with. So the black and white processing worked well here.
Also, just a side note here. I found it interesting that this photo was taken exactly one year to the day after the previous photo of Cocoa Beach, October 10, 2023 and 2024. Very interesting to see what we were doing on the same day one year apart.
Photo: A single Raw exposure, processed in Darktable.
Camera: Sony Alpha A7 II
Lens: Rokinon 35mm f/1.8
ISO: ISO-200
Shutter Speed: 1/4000 sec.
Aperture: f/4
Focal length: 35mm
Date: October 10, 2024
Location: Panama City, Panama
