I Took A Photograph Of It

You did the corner and it felt like something, so you took a picture of it.

Almost everybody does this, and almost nobody says so, because the reason is a little tender. You took the picture because you wanted evidence. Because you know how quickly a thing you did stops feeling like it happened, and a photograph seemed like the way to keep it.

And then you looked at the photograph.

And it was nothing. It was a flat rectangle with a bit of counter in it, and the light was bad, and the rest of the room came into the frame at the edges, and the whole thing looked like a photograph of a mess with one clear bit in it.

So you felt worse than before you took it. And you deleted it, or you did not delete it, and either way something went out of you.

I want to talk about what a camera can and cannot do, because I think it has been handed a job it was never able to perform.

Measuring themselves by themselves

There is a line in Corinthians about comparison that is unusually blunt.

For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise. (2 Corinthians 10:12, King James Version)

Are not wise.

That is a strong verdict on a very ordinary human habit, and Paul says it about measuring. Not about pride, exactly. About the act of holding yourself against a standard and seeing what comes out.

Now your camera did something similar to what that verse describes. It took your work and put it next to everything else in the frame, and then it handed you the result as if that were a measurement.

You are looking at an instrument that cannot see effort, and no photograph has ever once been able to hold what forty minutes cost. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a false measure out of somebody's hand, and 2 Corinthians 10:12 calls that whole way of measuring not wise.

But a photograph cannot see effort. It cannot see that the corner took forty minutes. It cannot see that it is the first thing done in that room in a year. It flattens the whole of what happened into a rectangle where the only visible quantity is how much stuff there is.

So it is not a bad photograph. It is the wrong instrument, applied to a thing it has no ability to measure.

You are not looking at an accurate picture, and 2 Corinthians 10:12 has never once treated a measurement as automatically true. It is written that measuring and comparing that way is not wise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an instrument out of a person's hand when it has been reporting wrongly.

You have handed a camera a job that no camera has ever once been able to do. The word calls the whole habit unwise rather than sinful, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes an authority a thing should never have had.

Your own eyes in the room are a better instrument

Now the practical thing, and it will sound almost too simple.

Go and look at it in the room.

Not on a screen. In the room, where your eyes have context. Where you know how long it took, and what was there before, and what it cost you to do it on a Tuesday after work.

A photograph strips all of that out. Standing in the room keeps all of it in.

And this is not sentimentality. It is accuracy. The version of that corner that includes what it cost is the true version, and the version in the photograph is a version with most of the truth removed.

You were never being honest with yourself by looking at the photograph, and there has never once been a version of that image that contained what the work actually was. 2 Corinthians 10:12 warns about a measuring that produces a false result, and the Spirit of God is the one who returns a person to a true way of seeing what they did.

So tonight, no camera.

You are permitted to be the one who sees this, and being the one who sees it has never once been vanity. It is written that the comparing among themselves is not wise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a person looks at their own work without an instrument between them.

Go and look at it with your own eyes

So here is the whole of it, and it is a minute.

Go and stand in front of the corner. In the room. No phone.

Look at it and let your eyes take in the whole context, including how long it took and what was there before.

Then go and sit down and clean nothing.

You are able to see your own work truly tonight, and seeing it has never once needed a picture to prove it. 2 Corinthians 10:12 puts a warning on the measuring, and the Spirit of God is present in front of one cleared corner with nothing between a person and what they did.