Digital Photos and Forgiveness

I was discussing the way digital cameras and digital photos have altered our photographing experience with a friend earlier.  Not only have they altered the way we view photography, they also affect the way we see ourselves.

 

Gone are the days when we had to develop a whole roll of film just to see how many photos were actually 'usable'.  We had to sift through the blurred images, those with a thumb distorting most of the picture, the photos where the subject is off to the side or at an odd angle.  And the red eyes.

 

These days, we can instantly check our photos and see whether or not they 'measure up'.  If we're not completely satisfied and we don't feel that we look good enough, we can improve them and edit them and digitally manipulate them until we are happy.  And, if the worst comes to the worst, we can hit 'delete' and we can get rid of them. 

 

If there's anything we're not completely happy with, we can simply get rid of it.

 

I sometimes wish it was that easy in life, too.

 

But unfortunately we have to deal with the difficult and messy things in our lives along with the beautiful and air-brushed parts too - we can't simply delete the bits we don't like.

 

We can't.  But God can.

 

The Bible says that,

"He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.  For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.  He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west."

 

[Psalm 103:10-12 NLT]

 

He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.

 

We can't 'delete' and remove the things that we don't like from our own lives, but when God looks at our lives, He doesn't keep a record of our wrongs - He doesn't keep all of the 'bad photos'. 

 

Instead, He looks on us with immeasurable and unfailing love and compassion. 

 

The Grey Familiarity

I read this in a magazine article about photography today,

 

"In order to see we must practise looking beyond the grey familiarity of our everyday world."

 

The article was about learning to see things differently and to open our eyes when looking for photo opportunities.  To be purposeful in the things that we look for, and to look beyond the obvious.  Sometimes we become so familiar with what is familiar, that we forget to look beyond the surface.  We think we know what we will see and so we stop really looking.

 

I remember in Art GCSE we discussed this idea.  How often we think we know what we are drawing, and so we draw our idea of things, rather than drawing the actual thing.  I remember we went outside and practised drawing trees without looking at the paper.  It took a while to get used to, but what we actually drew was far more tree-like than if we had just drawn what we thought we saw.

 

It made us look properly and to see things afresh.

 

We can become so used to 'seeing' things in our lives too, without looking properly.  We assume we know what we are seeing and that we are seeing things properly, so we forget to look beyond the surface.  We end up settling for the grey familiarity of our everyday world.

 

We think we 'know' what our futures look like.  We think we know what our skills and talents are.  We think we know what we are capable of.  We think we know what other people think of us.  We think we know what God thinks of us.

 

But so often our thinking is wrong - it is based on the way things appear, on the surface of things.

 

But the Bible reminds us not to live by what we see on the surface, but to look deeper - to look beyond the grey familiarity.

"We live by faith, not by sight."

 

[2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV] 

 

I think perhaps I was drawn to this quote so much because of the name of my blog: The Golden and The Grey.  I started writing  several months ago because I felt challenged to look through the grey familiarity of my everyday life and to look for evidence of God's grace and glory.  To look for the golden in amongst the grey.

 

In his song, 'When the Music Fades', Matt Redman reminds us that God looks beyond the surface too:

 

        You look much deeper within

        Through the way things appear

        You're looking into my heart.

 

God looks beyond the surface, and so should we. 

Look through the grey familiarity.  Look for the golden opportunity.