I love Instagram. I post pictures there all the time. Baby pictures, kitten pictures, and currently I’m doing my November pumpkin photo challenge. One of the appealing features of Instagram is the photo filters. You can snap a picture in poor lighting, but with the tap of a button you can post an autumn-esque portrait or a beachy pic. Life looks better on Instagram.
But sometimes we need to remember that life is unfiltered. It’s beautiful and messy and sometimes there are things you can’t remove with a crop tool. Sometimes I get frustrated trying to take pictures in our home, which is currently being remodeled. I try to find one wall, one corner…without texture splatters or sheetrock chunks or drywall dust. But really, this is my home; this is where I live. Sometimes the cat litter is next to the keyboard and the diaper genie is next to the fireplace. Sometimes (okay, often) there are graham cracker pieces smooshed and strewn across my painted plywood floors because I have a crawling munchkin who is a messy eater.
And that’s okay.
I don’t have to compete with Better Homes and Gardens or Martha Stewart or whomever else has a neater, nicer, more put-together home. My house is in progress, as is my life. I can appreciate the “perfect” points in art, but my appreciation needs to stay there. My life as I live it needs to be clear and open and unfiltered, in the sense that I don’t have to hide my quirks and dings and imperfections. I have a few baby stretch marks. I take medication to ease anxiety attacks and to diffuse depression. I say things which require apologies. I think critical thoughts about other people and have to ask God to re-focus my heart. I struggle with time management and perfectionism at the same time. I also like to brag about my baking achievements, but anyway…
All this to say, I would rather be known for honesty and humility than for put-togethered-ness. God has been constantly reminding me of the very temporary time we have on earth, and it’s far to short to be spent impressing the masses. We exist to bring glory to God, and to attract others to Him. How pitiful we are when we spend ourselves for ourselves.
God knows who we are, and who we are becoming. If you’re headed in the right direction, there’s no shame in letting people join you in the bumps along the way.
So post on Instagram. Post those autumn leaves and your PSLs and your puppies and kittens and selfies…but live your life without a cover-up filter. Let God shine in and through you with all of His light, all of His glory, and all of His perfection.
“For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body.”
– 2 Corinthians 4:5-11
jess leigh hanna 