As a blogger I have been learning to take photos. There is a lot that goes into making a photo look good enough to put online to display whatever it is that is in the picture. The light has to hit just right. There is the 1/3 rule which I am still trying to figure out. There is the background which, if not good, can ruin the picture completely. The angle of the item has to be “just so” to show off the best features of the item. Basically, it is a lot of work and if you don’t know what you are doing, like me, it can be frustrating and sometimes the pictures just look…well, sad, bad, disgusting, and definitely not on-line worthy.
By the time any of my pictures go up they have been tweaked, primped, glossed, and funneled through ever possible filter to make them look perfect.
This week’s recipe photos really look disgusting in the wrong light. Instead of a crunchy, yummy topping of crushed up Almond Roca on top it looks like someone got sick…either end! Oy!
No matter how many pictures I took and tweaked the food just looked gross. So, I gave up, sort of, and went with the best picture possible and hoped it wouldn’t look disgusting to anyone else.
The whole process made me think of how God sees us. It made me think about how we go to church, we (maybe) read the Bible, we memorize some scripture, and maybe we write blog posts about Christian life and think we must look so good to God.
I’d say that is wishful thinking.
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. ~ Luke 18:19
We are human. We falter. We fail. We stumble. We croak, choke, and muck up. We don’t look pretty to God no matter what we do to be in His favor. Every side is our bad side unless we have Christ. With Christ we have been made clean; made whole; made new; made wondrous for God. Without Christ we look like the brownie topping, unpleasing and definitely not pretty.
For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus … ~ 1 Timothy 2:5
We can try to make ourselves look like good Christians, and we may fool those around us with our filters and actions, but we can’t fool God.
For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ~ 1 Corinthians 2:11
We can’t gloss over the imperfections. He knows our hearts; He knows what we are thinking and doing every second of every day.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. ~ Psalm 139:2
That means He knows what our spirits really look like. That means we need to be sincere in our faith and our confessions to Christ. Whatever we do to serve God, to love God, we need to do with glad hearts.
Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. ~ Proverbs 4:26
We can rejoice because even though our earthly selves are not pleasing to God we have been made pleasing to God through Christ. Just as filters applied to photos make them pleasing to the eye so is Christ’s blood our filter for sin, a filter that washed away all our imperfections and made us pure and without flaw in God’s eyes.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace… ~ Ephesians 1:7
