Comparison is Folly

I'm sitting here trying to budget and getting all worked up. I'm thinking,"if we just didn't have these three or four things, then BOOM!; there's my house and land!" Instead, we do have those things along with all the other things. A house and land will not be in the plans for a while.

 I look on Facebook and see everybody else posting their new house and new cars, and new this and new that. And I get frustrated. I get impatient. And then I get downwind from myself, and I see what's happening. 

Comparison is the thief of joy! 

My daddy did his best to raise me, but he was not one to budget. On a meager fixed income, our bills were never caught up, and our lights were cut off multiple times. We had NO food many times. I don't mean like now, when I walk to the refrigerator and see all the things I would have to cook to eat, and say "There's nothing [ready] to eat."  NO, I mean NOTHING.  I became lactose intolerant because we went without dairy and even eggs for so long.  Meat was a treat.  Shoot, even rice and beans were a treat, especially if we had salt and pepper to season them with.  I was below poverty level.

Now?  I am not poor.  I am frustrated because of the responsibilities of adulthood.  I am exasperated at the athletic ability of my check to sprint right through my fingers.  But, I am not poor.  My bills are paid.  My family eats well.  I can even afford to buy my child specialty products because she has food allergies.  I do not revel in her allergies, but I am grateful to accommodate them and afford her a more normal childhood.

I made poor and difficult decisions to afford transportation and education.  Childcare costs also do not help.  In about 4 years, things will be a little brighter in the home shopping market.  In the meantime, I'll save up and enjoy the life I live.  The one where I own the little place I currently call home and live here with the two loves of my life.  The one where the lights are on, and the fridge is full.  And where the laundry piles are ever growing.

Lord, help me to put on humility, and lay down pride.  May every breath be less of me, and more of You.  And finally, let your will be done in Your perfect timing.  And I know it will be beautiful on that day.


¹¹ He has made everything ^[a]appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, ^[b]yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
¹² I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime;
-Ecclesiastes 3:11,12 

Beyond the Negative

     It is unclear to me whether it were Henry Fox Talbot or Louis Daguerre, or possibly some other unnamed fellow who first transferred a positive image onto paper from a negative.  Henry Fox Talbot is credited with the feat, while his sodium chloride process was not stabilized and the images he printed via contact were fleeting.  Talbot would place plants against paper and brush with the salt solution; he would then expose the paper to light.  The salted portions would darken while the remainder stayed light.  Unfortunately, sodium chloride is not stabilized so the images would often disappear with further exposure to light- like a refiner's fire.  He spent most of his later life in attempts to fix onto paper the beautiful images he observed.  Louis Daguerre's method involved a transfer of an image onto copper with a silver nitrate solution and allowed for reprinting via the copper negative.  

Why does this matter?  Well, I find it no coincidence that God impressed upon two men without acquaintance with each other to realize that photo negatives can be created and then used to print the positive image we now term as photos or pictures.  What curiosity to look at an inverted image and not see failure, but possibility.  There is quite a process, an art, to developing a clear photo from a negative.  The aperture width of the light beam, the time of exposure, and sequence of chemicals used to fixate the image before drying permanently.  It takes effort, skill, and precision.  There are some points along the process where the image is unclear and the outcome questionable.  Even an experienced photographer must sometimes trust the process instead of the current image he or she sees.  

I imagine that our relationship with Christ is much the same way.  He is skillfully developing us into a masterpiece.  We think we look blurry, or the exposure is too long.  The chemicals are stinky unpleasant, and we think we're going in the wrong order.  Surely, it cannot be meant for us to wait this long before the next step.  Look at that person over there, they've gone through this step and the next in half the time we've been in this step.  And maybe I didn't have enough exposure because that masterpiece over there seems to have been under the spotlight forever, and the result is breathtaking.  I'm not sure God knows what he's doing because this looks nothing like what I see going on in any of those other pieces.  Or, we get comfortable where we're at and do not want to move to the next step.  Will it hurt?  I have finally come to acceptance of this step, and now I must move?  Why?  No one else is moving yet.  Surely, this is too soon.  

It is only when we can step back and trust the skillful hands with which God develops us when we entrust ourselves and our negatives to him that we start to see the beauty in the process.  Maybe we are part of a collage, or perhaps we are a single photo wonder.  It is not to us to worry. We are still in process.  We are still in development.  We all question at times, but our final image is not yet fixed.  Sometimes, even when the final image is fixed, we can only see the beauty in the company of others.  We provided a unique perspective or key piece to bring the whole together.

So, take heart.  Be encouraged.  God sees beyond the negative.  And those that you saw develop quicker?  Well, you didn't see the times when they were impatient and had to start the process over because they refused the exposure or did not follow the correct procedure.  We all have a purpose, a design, and Master Developer. 

¹⁶ Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 

- 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

 

 

I'm okay with the negatives, because I know God sees beyond them.