Last week, Catherine, the Princess of Wales, admitted to photoshopping a photo of her with her three children.
The admission came as a result of the media storm that accused her of editing and manipulating – faking – the family snapshot.
We may never know Catherine’s reasons, but I can’t help wondering how many of us try to edit and manipulate our lives before others to present ourselves as someone we’re not.
We do that, for example, by curating our social media so that we look better than we really are. We only put the good stuff online, rarely our failures.
But is it possible we do that with God?
We think we are creating a better image of ourselves, hoping he won’t see all the bad stuff in our life so that we might be welcomed into heaven by him.
The reality is, he sees our every sin and our every bad deed.
He knows our vilest thoughts and the evil intent of our hearts.
And because of all that, he also knows none of us deserve to be in heaven with him.
The good news is through faith in Jesus, God overlooks our worst selves.
The Bible calls this grace.
Grace means we get something we do not deserve – namely, God’s forgiveness. And this means we can be with God in heaven forever.
Easter gives us the opportunity to reflect on God’s grace to us in Jesus. For it was “while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
We do not need to fake it with God.
We do not need to photoshop our life so that we are somehow more acceptable to him. God knows, on our own, we are not.
And that’s why Easter happened.
~ Contributed by Pastor Chris Taylor of the Deniliquin Baptist Church, on behalf of the Combined Churches of Deniliquin.
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