Do you remember taking pictures with a camera that used film?
You took a picture, hoped for the best, waited until you had taken all the pictures the roll of film could hold, sent the film off, and after waiting several days, went to the store to pick up your prints. The results of your photographic efforts were sometimes wonderful and other times terrible.
You were stuck with what you had.
With digital photography, almost everything has changed. Phones that have amazing cameras, programs, and capabilities have made a stand-alone camera a thing of the past, except maybe for professional photographers.
There are apps and programs that allow a picture to be improved, distorted, changed, morphed, and just about anything you can think of. You can make color pictures black and white, remove wrinkles (wow!), change the background, import a person to the beach or mountains, change eye color, and remove all color except for one item---like a scarlet umbrella.
In fact, the programs and apps change the images so much that it becomes debatable what is real. Is it art? Is it cheating when the portrait is “improved” from the original person?
One of my school friends recently got married. She put a few beautiful pictures on Facebook. It made me feel I was able to share a little of her joy that day.
When I saw her at school recently, I asked her if she had gotten all her pictures back yet, and she said she hadn’t.
We continued talking about the way photographers take and deliver pictures today, and I told her about a friend of mine who takes wedding pictures. She goes through each photo and crops, changes, and improves each one using a program called Photoshop and brings the composition and images the closest to perfection she can get.
Jokingly, we said, “Don’t you wish you could Photoshop life?”
Are there things you would change in your life? Places you want to take yourself out of? Imperfections you want to make beautiful? Something you want to delete?
Do you wish you could make your life perfect? Get rid of the spots of sin?
God can do the impossible. Isaiah 1:18 says: “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as while as snow; though they red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”
How can this happen?
John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Acts 3:19 explains: “Repent, therefore, and turn again, that our sins may be blotted out”
I John 1:9 tells us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Better than Photoshop, better than an artificial fix, better than temporary false perfection; God can make an eternal change!
Why not let Him? Get the picture?
