The Polka Dot Cupcake Pirate

REFLECTION

My daughter posted a link to a blog on facebook this morning - a woman wrote about people who don't like their pictures taken for whatever reason, but was encouraging them to do so anyway.

One reason most of us hate our photographs is because we think they don't even look like us.  Something just "isn't right."  We avoid the camera because we feel we're not photogenic or perfect or we look awkward or even weird. 

Every day I look at myself in the mirror, so I feel I am quite familiar with how I look.  I have become so accustomed to the face in my reflection that I forget others do not see me as I see myself.  I do not take into account the reflection is reversed.  What I see in the mirror is not the truth - the photographs that make me cringe are true; they show me as others see me.

Robert Burns wrote a poem after spotting a louse in a lady's bonnet during church.  An excerpt:

O wad some Power the gift tae gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea'e us,
An ev'n devotion! *

 

Getting past the brogue - The poet chastises the louse for not realising how important his host is, and then reflects that, to a louse, we are all equal prey, and that we would be disabused of our pretensions if we were to see ourselves through each other's eyes.**

 

Oh, but PRAISE GOD!!!  Robert Burns was wrong!  Not only are we to see each other through God's eyes, ("Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." Ephesians 4:32 NIV) we are to realize how God sees us through HIS eyes.  We are new creatures, forgiven and redeemed. 

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." 2 Corinthians 5:17  NKJ

Next time someone wants to take your picture, think about how God sees you - as His perfect and righteous child - then smile your brightest smile and thank the photographer for blessing you because someone wants to see your beautiful face!
"Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely."
  1 Corinthians 13:12  New Living Translation

*See http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_louse.htm for entire poem).
** (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Louse)