Sunday Reflection - A Time Lapse Life

If you're a regular reader of this blog you know I have been playing with a time lapse app on my camera phone.  It's been a lot of fun.

Time lapse photography is a simple concept.  You set your camera to take individual pictures over a set period of time.  The software in the app combines the individual photos into a movie clip.  The time lapse movies I have made recently are pictures taken every three seconds.

If you use a longer period between pictures, the movie gets more frantic, jerky looking - kind of like a Keystone Cops movie for those of you old enough to know what I'm talking about.  If you use a shorter period, 1 or 2 seconds, the movie is smoother and more continuous.

As I played with my camera phone, I started thinking about what a time lapse life would look like.  In everyone's life there are events, actions, thoughts, words, that we would like to take back, to have a do-over - but since we can't then we would love to skip over them.  Some are our own sins, some are events that have brought pain and trials into our lives.

One example for me is when Betty was seriously injured in a horse riding accident.  Our lives were filled with pain and trials for many months because of that accident.  If I could, I would love to skip over that point in our lives.  

It's said that we will stand before God someday and our whole life will be played out like a movie before us and all of heaven.  I picture a high-definition, 3-D, IMAX screen big enough for all the clouds of witnesses to watch the movie of my life.  It would be nice if that movie of my life would be a time lapse movie that showed only the good things that I did or that happened to me.

But I know that's not how it will be.  It will be a complete movie with all of the warts of my life showing on the big screen.

What I've come to realize is that those warts - my sins, my pain, my trials - are all important parts of my life.  They have contributed to the person I am today as much as my successes, my good actions.

The key is whether I give the warts in my life to God as quickly and easily as I give the successes.

If I could go back and change the past so that Betty never had her horse riding accident I would do it in a second.  But I can't.  However, from that experience, we have gained much.  Our relationship grew stronger.   We learned to rely even more on God's grace and healing.  Betty is a better and more confident rider now than before.  And on and on.

So, our lives are not a time lapse movie.  They are a continuous series of events, actions, words, thoughts - some we regret - that contribute to our growth toward the image of Christ if we are willing to sacrifice all of our lives, even our warts, to God.