ISO 100 | 50mm | f 5.6 | 1/250 sec

I was sitting here earlier last week contemplating the near impossibility of capturing a fully adequate portrait – one that depicts every aspect of an individual for who they are, their unique personalities, characteristics, interests, gifts, hobbies, etc.  The difficulty lies primarily in the fact that a single snapshot is incapable of documenting the entire gamut of an individual’s persona.  A fraction of a second in the entire stream of time that makes up one’s existence is hardly capable of describing a person for who they truly are.

Determined to overcome this difficulty, I set out yesterday to create a self-portrait that fully exemplified who I am as an individual, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  😉  It would not (nor could it) be composed of a single snapshot, but rather a whole slew of mini snapshots capturing the various characteristics of my personage.  By themselves these images would be pointless, but when placed together, they would form a (hopefully) meaningful representation of who I am as a person.

As I worked tirelessly at piecing together the individual pieces, I came to the realization that what I was looking at was a real confusing jumble.  A mishmash of totally unrelated characteristics, interests, and personas – artist, musician, business man, and slob, everything fit together in perfect harmony to create a conglomeration of mixed-up imagery that depicted who I really am – a mess.  But not just any mess, a beautiful mess created by a God who is faithful to finish the work that He has begun.  Right now, who I am may not look like much, but God sees the whole picture from the beginning, and if I’m faithful to trust and believe and live out what He has for me right now, I know that all the pieces will fall into place in His good time.

In reality, we’re all real pieces of work.  We’ve got our well polished, beautified, and well-groomed sides that we display for all the world to see, but inside each of us are still areas of struggle, areas of uncertainty, areas of undeveloped beauty waiting to be discovered.  It truly is a wondrous life that each of us lives, and to see how God works in those who are willing to be crafted by His hand is a glorious thing to behold.  Sure, we will always have ugly spots to remove, and there will always be room for improvement, but if we trust God and push ahead with the things He has given us, the picture will start to become clearer and the jumbled mess of who we are will begin to form an image of true beauty – the picture of a life lived for Christ.