Someone Else's Camera Lense

I love photography. When a picture turns out perfectly I can be moved to literal tears. How weird is that?! Combine that with a beautiful poem or my favorite verse and I'm emphatically ecstatic. But have you ever wanted to see yourself through someone else's camera? Oh how I have. I have wished that I could see myself how someone else saw me....because in the view finder of my own camera I notice all the lighting errors, the irrefutable flaws, or the possibility of a better pose.

I have a bad problem, and I'll admit it right this second....I compare myself to too many people. I look at the picture of someone else's life and I think, "Oh, if only I could be a people person like that!.....If only I could be athletic like that!......If only I had her figure!.....If only I had a boyfriend...." oh yes, pathetic isn't it? But I'm pretty sure that we all do that at some point. We are dissatisfied with who we are--and in all bluntness we are discontended with who GOD CREATED US TO BE. We want to be the person we see in our camera lense--not the person behind the camera. Oh, how we fail to see who God has created us to be...oh how we miss the glorious person He says we are! According to God, I am:
A child of God (Jn 1:12)
The light of the world (Matt. 5:14)
Made alive in Christ (Eph. 2:5)
A member of a chosen race, a royal priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9-10)
An enemy of the devil (1 Pet. 5:8)
Chosen of God, holy and dearly loved (Col. 3:12)
A new Creation (2 Cor. 5:17)
Chosen and appointed by Christ to bear His fruit (Jn. 15:16)
A son of God, one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:26-28)
A joint heir with Christ, sharing His inheritance (Rom. 8:17)
The salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13)
God's Workmanship (Eph. 2:10)
Righteous and holy (Eph. 4:24)
A saint (Eph. 1:1)
A temple (1 Cor. 3:16)
An alien to this world (1 Pet. 2:11)
A slave to righteousness (Rom. 6:18)
A holy partaker in a heavenly calling (Heb. 3:1)
A member of His house (Eph. 2:19)
Seated with Christ in Heaven (Eph. 2:6)
One of God's living stones, being built up in Christ as a spiritual house (1 Pet. 2:5)
Part of the true vine (Jn. 15:1)

As I have told a friend of mine many times, "I wish you could see you the way I see you." If she could, she would see the beauty that I see in her....the beauty she sometimes misses. If you are the same way, take a look through the viewfinder of God's camera. He doesn't want carbon copies of each person....He created us each individually for a specific purpose. This is often hard for me to grasp, but He's working on it in me. I'm a work in progress, but God says that I am good just the way He is making me to be.

Because He lives,
Sarah