Picture perfect

I was thinking this week about how much I love the camera technology on my iPhone.

I know.

Kinda random…but stick with me.

Photography has always held a fascination for me, I guess because I am such a “picture” person and often a photograph captures more than just an image.

For one who loves making pictures with words, what challenging fun it is to tell a story in one photo… to me it is an art form that gives me great delight.

It is a treat to live in the day when I can whip out my phone and, seriously…so convenient and best camera ever.

I can zoom in and out, turn to different angles and see the potential right there on the screen as I am snapping pictures. It is wonderful.

I can take as many shots in a row as my heart desires.

A close scrutiny of them helps me eliminate all but the ones I am satisfied with and I have some keepers.

I can crop the picture, add filters, make collages …. all right on my phone.

When our children send me their photos, I can zoom in on details like baby toes or a little tongue sticking out in concentration…what the snack on the plate is…you name it.

Rachel even sends me a duplicate of Instagram posts from time to time because she knows I will want to zoom and you can’t zoom Instagram. She knows I will take a screen shot so I can zoom….so she saves me the trouble. Bless her.

It’s all great stuff but as I reflected on it, I realize we can be that way about our thinking as well.

Whether it’s trying to understand the people we deal with, or conversations going on around us, or the barrage of media commentary each day; we seem to zoom in and out as we try to understand and make sense of what we are perceiving.

It can seem like we have the “whole picture” of something and then we manipulate our screen so that we either take in the sweeping and broad overview, thereby missing the details…

or narrow it down to the parts we personally can process and ignore the big picture.

It is important to realize we do this because we are human.

It is also important to realize that God doesn’t.

Because He is God.

So often I find myself assigning to Him my human limitations.

I think He may be only seeing the overview and needs my help to notice the nitty-gritty details….or I think He has lost sight of the panoramic vision and is honed in on a minor technicality.

I try to take hold of the screen shot and get my pincher fingers going as I zoom in and out ….helping Him to see all the angles….all the shadings…all the highlights.

And He gently pries what is, essentially, a one dimensional tool that has produced a flat image, out of my hand and reminds me He doesn’t TAKE pictures…He MAKES them…

He sees all the layers and depths, the visible and invisible.

Only God sees the past, present and future in one glance.

Only God sees the beginning from the end.

Only God sees the outward action and the inward heart of every single person involved; as well as the circumstances that led to it and the final outcome of it.

Rather than try and get God to look at my pictures, I want to learn to see with His lens.

The only way I know to do this is to take the things I see in this world and bring them before His Word.

In prayer and study and quiet, to let Him hold the camera…let Him zoom in and out and explain to me to the extent that I can understand.

And then to trust that He is doing more than I can ever grasp.

I will only see glimpses as He reveals His truth and perspective to my limited scope of processing.

I pray to have a teachable heart and a spirit yielded to the only true Image-Maker.

Be blessed as you seek His heart today ….

He most assuredly has zoomed in on yours <3