Photo Editing One’s Life

How Easy To Use This “Software”

Guest Post by Lauri Lemke Thompson

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”  Phil. 4:6 (NIV).

I’m an amateur, but I enjoy photography and use a couple of photo editing programs to improve my pictures. Photo looks too dark? I use my “brightness” feature and thus transform a gloomy day into a sunshiny one. 

I get a great snapshot of the ocean at sunset, but something looks cockeyed. I didn’t hold the camera level; however, the “straighten” option allows me to fix the horizon. Haze, fog, or even smoke that day? I wave my wand, and it disappears.

To say nothing of the “crop” feature. Didn’t want that Men’s Restroom sign in your otherwise lovely scenic? Easy peasy: crop! And how did that sloppily dressed, chubby lady get into your picture? No matter; crop her out. 

Now one program even lets me delete stuff from the middle of a photo. Power lines intruded on many of my landscapes. Erased! 

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Oh, it’s been photoshopped.” We’ve come to use that as a verb to convey such monkeying with a photo. It’s sometimes controversial, but I’m loving it. 

One day, when I was photo editing, I thought, “Wow, wouldn’t it be marvelous if it were half this easy to edit my life – maybe to correct some of my blunders?”

When I’m making my personal skies gloomy when I wouldn’t have to (in other words, indulging in a pity party), I’d love to lighten and brighten my mood with a click. When I’ve been careless in how I talked to someone, I could just crop those words out.

Maybe you’d love to get rid of the fog that’s clouding your vision and decision-making, choosing better clarity. Or would you like to eliminate something you wish you’d never done? Click. Gone!

Maybe you’ve been making lousy priority choices, resulting in your life feeling way out of balance. Or perhaps you’ve messed up a relationship and now it’s a sticky conundrum. In either case, what if you could just click “straighten” and it would all be straightened out?

Well, I’m here to say that you can (to some extent, at least) brighten, add vividness, clear the fog, delete stuff, and straighten things out.

What you’ll need to click is prayer. Prayer can’t fix everything (eg, sometimes you have to live with the consequences of a bad choice), but it can bring you freedom as you roll what’s bothering you onto God’s shoulders. It can’t erase the past, but it can help you accept it and look forward. Of course, any analogy breaks down, but bear with me?

Prayer can bring you the following: peace when disturbed, comfort when sad, wisdom when confused, and joy even when troubles assault. And this is only a partial list.

Repentant prayer will bring you forgiveness. Prayer for yourself and others can bring you amazing answers. If you’ve never received Christ as Savior and Lord, prayer can even bring you redemption, an exciting relationship with Him, and eternal life.

Oh, and the “software” for prayer is free. You just have to use it.

A Wisconsin native, Lauri Lemke Thompson appreciates living in the lovely Ozark Mountains in Branson, Missouri. She is active in Christian Women’s Connection (Stonecroft) and the Ozarks Chapter of the American Christian Writers. Her two books, Hitting Pause and Pressing Forward, are collections of her columns, articles, and devotions. Her bimonthly column appears in the Branson Globe newspaper.