Your Life in Pictures

Scripture Reading: Mt 5:16 "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

Did you ever want to be a movie star? Lots of kids after seeing their first movie, aspire to be one. They will get out in the backyard and act out some story they make up. Sometimes the stories are good, but most times they make no sense. I remember trying to make a short movie when video first came about, it didn't make sense. Actually I am older than video and remember loading and 8mm camera, to give it a go, to no avail. However that attention people give to actors/actresses does something for the human ego. Being in front of the camera makes some folks feel important, while others it makes nervous.

Making movies is what I studied in school. I can tell you to professionally make a film involves a lot of hard work. One of the more time consuming job is the editing process. You spend long hours going over and over footage to get it trimmed to the right length. When you think you have it right, it needs more! You see a lot of pictures this way. In fact, for every second the camera is on, it takes either 24 or 30 pictures per second! Each one of these pictures is called a frame. Frames added together make movies, after all, a movie is only a whole lot of still pictures hurriedly shown together one after another. Its nice to have a smooth running film with none of the frames damaged or have any marks on them. Yet, with so many frames there are bound to be a few that are undesirable. Such as it is in our lives. Every moment of every day we present a picture or frame to someone, hopefully those frames are good ones, sometimes we would rather edit out the bad ones.

Our lives compose of stuff and events that all compacts together to make us who we are and who others see us to be. In the old days of film editing, we would have a rack of small reels, which would contain clips of different stuff. You would label that clip and then run it through a viewer to see how it fit with whatever subject or story you would show in your film. It is true that most of a film's footage never gets seen for either it was shot wrong or just didn't help support the topic. How many times in our lives have we said of done something that does not really support who we are in Christ? Wouldn't it be nice to pull off the shelf that bad statement, thought, action, etc and toss it? This is what Christ does when He forgives us. Our bad parts are taken out completely never to be reviewed by anyone.

Physical cutting of film is something necessary to produce a good film. Likewise there are things in life we must physically cut out of our lives or abstain from altogether. Things that seem to fit or seem to be okay, just not our best, are just the things that can be the most harmful. We all would agree that drugs and alcohol is bad for us and certainly hurts our bodies as well as our testimony, it is the seemingly Innocent things that do more damage. The innocent matters of life when compiled stifle our spiritual walk. So many times we get caught up in the temporal that we forget the eternal. This is when we know its time to cut out certain habits, favorites, etc. When God gets lost in the stuff of our lives then the picture we present to others isn't very clear. Its hard to tell a story when you go off on rabbit trails from the main subject. Its hard to show a film that has a lot of extraneous content and tell a story with it. Such it is with your life and showing Christ.

Handling a film with gloves is necessary to prevent scratching and other marring influences. In life we need to handle ourselves carefully according to God's Word. The "Gloves" of the Word protect us from all sorts of failure, fears, doubts, ideas, bad habits, etc. Gloves also clean off dirt that lays on the surface of the film. The Word of God likewise helps us identify and clean areas of our lives that become soiled with sin. The problem is we don't always like to wear gloves. We like to think we can do things pretty well on our own. Some Christians believe themselves to be so spiritually strong that they can look out for themselves. Tragically, when we don't wear the gloves of the Word we end up in bad shape and bring others down with us. Without the correction and protection of the Word, our lives become so dirty that they become unusable, just like film that is not cleaned. A dirty film does not project well. It misses and jumps in the projector and does not show a clear image. Dirt builds up and shows in the projected image as well. So it is with our lives. We don't take the time to clean spiritual selves, we present a poor quality picture to the world around us.

Did you ever think yourself to be in "pictures?" Whether you want to be or not, we are. The good news is that it is God who is doing the editing, if we let Him. He alone makes a finished picture of our lives a masterpiece and a great story of His redemption. It is so important we take aim not to present anything to the all watching world as a deterrent from them seeing Christ projected.

When people see a compelling and clear projected film, it changes some part of them. When people see us, how do they visualize Christ? How clear is our life and example of what others should desire for themselves?

Lord, how guilty we often are of not showing our best of what You have done in us for others to see. Help us Lord to examine our lives and project the best example and testimony we can to win others to you and for others to be an encouragement. Thank You for taking an interest in us to be involved with our lives. We praise You and love You Lord. In Your Name, Amen.