God's Photography Studio

* extracted from Food for Thought *

Looking through a camera lens clarifies what is needed to zoom in on a central theme of what is trying to be pictured. I recently heard a photography analogy. "Depression is the dark room Satan takes us to develop our negatives."

Depression over my daily problems or world events can send me into a downward spiral of negativism. It hinders the joy I could be experiencing in my daily walk with Jesus. It can develop into a chronic, debilitating physical,spiritual and emotional sickness requiring medical intervention.

To carry the photography analogy further, the positive light of Jesus, filtered through the developing fluid of His powerful shed blood can develop those negatives into the positive image of us transformed by the way Christ handles those negatives in our lives. We need to take
our negatives in for Jesus to cleanse. Jesus is our cleansing solution for a positive life. 1 John 1:9 in the Bible says, "If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. " He suffered and died on the cross for our negative sinful lives, was buried and rose again to show us He won the victory.

We may have reasons to be sad or even depressed, but we have a choice. We can take those negatives into God's photography studio. We can have a transformed print of our life and even have a positive impact on others as we portray this to them. We become vulnerable when we are transparent like this, but our transparency lets God's light shine through us to reflect Himself to others. We need to let our light so shine before men that they see our Father which is in heaven and glorify Him.

Once we have the solution, in Christ, we picture what God did in our lives to others. Then these others turn to God to let Him develop their negative lives into positive ones in Him. God can give us a vision of people transformed by Jesus and His shed blood as a form of "developing solution". That is how Jesus helps us love the unlovable.

Once we have become believers we need to choose each day to have access to God through Jesus by praying and reading his Word in the Bible to find His solutions for our negatives and downward spirals. The rewards include victory over sin, joy and peace, and a wonderful eternity in Heaven.