If you come to my house, you’ll see photographs on display. I love pictures and everything they represent—friends and family, places, or just beautiful things to look at. One of my favorite hobbies is collecting frames and then matching them to photos. I don’t think there’s necessarily just one right choice for each image, but there certainly are some wrong ones that can completely ruin a picture. Imagine a beautiful photograph of someone’s champion dog in a frame that says “Sisters” or a sparkly pink box surrounding a close up of rugged Uncle Ted, and you’ll get the idea. The frame should highlight the image and not draw attention to itself. Images of good things in well-chosen frames make life fuller and more interesting.
I also have a cache of pictures that are not on display. We all do. The memories of those things we don’t want to look at are hidden away in a place only we can see. In my case, my brother’s death, my father’s imprisonment, and my mom’s Alzheimers are three images that used to haunt me. They were all surrounded by the frames of sadness, bitterness, and regret. I asked Jesus to help me deal with these depressing thoughts and, to my delight, he offered me new frames. Unlike the simple frames in my house, these are so beautiful and ornate that they draw attention to themselves and away from the ugliness they contain. They’re perfect!
Now I can look at those private images and actually appreciate them. The picture of my father is framed in the understanding that betrayal was the starting point that eventually led me to find God, my brother’s death in the hope that we’ll see each other again, and my mother’s terminal illness in thankfulness that she accepted Christ and was baptized just months before she was diagnosed. God’s love is a frame so breathtaking and intricate that any picture it surrounds becomes a work of art lovely to behold. I’m still working on reframing some undesirable images in that hidden place, but slowly and surely, and with God’s help, they are being displayed one by one on the wall of my heart as beautiful things to behold.
