When I was young, I loved it when my Papa, my Prof -may his soul rest in peace- would take photos of me or my brother with his Kodak camera. You know the one that took photos that came out blank and black and you had to wait for them to develop. I loved it when he would give me the picture to hold telling me to flap it back and forth so that the picture would come out nice. I honestly believed that I was responsible for the beauty or otherwise of the photo. So you can imagine my horror each time one would refuse to develop right. *laughing*
My Papa, my Prof loved to take snapshots of us, his family. Our albums prove this. We had many, many albums and as you flipped through the pages of these veritable history books, you got a glimpse into the way we were, how we looked, what we wore and sometimes you could tell how we felt in that moment back then. Each picture, each snapshot represented a moment in time But you know something? As lovely and cute as some of those photos of me were, you could not look at any of them and presume to pass a judgment on how I would be five, ten, twenty years down the line. A snapshot, no matter how awesome and beautiful it was. No matter how well it captured who I was then did not have the power to predict who or what I was going to become.
Same goes for the snapshot of your life right now. Today. If I took at photo of your life today, what would it look like? Pretty? Dismal? Colourful? Dull? Sharp? Blurred? Joyful? Sad? Well, you know what? If the snapshot of your life is positive, I am thrilled for you and pray God that all future snapshots only get better. But today my blog is for those who look at the snapshot of their lives today and wonder what the heck is going on (excuse my French). I mean, the picture is just so blah. I mean, it is true, you can see the potential in it because some parts of the photo are so sharp but it is so hard to figure it out for all the blurriness, No fear. Life is not a snapshot.
No, Life is a series, a collection, a reel of photo moments and glory to God, it is the last photo in the album, the last season in the series of your life that will matter. It does not matter where you are right now. What matters is where and how you end up. So keep your eye on the bigger picture, hold on to God and dare to believe that the lack, pain, stagnation, frustration, whatever you feel right now is just the dark before the morning. The hurt before the healing. The fire before the glowing.
OK, so you might not buy any of this but as I thought over how last year went and asked God to give me some assurance for 2014, this is what God laid in my heart. It does not matter what my situation looks like right now. It does not matter if I feel I should be in a better, different, higher place, the truth remains that all of this is just one snapshot of my life. And as long as I continue to breathe, doing what I can to decrease and have God increase in me, I have the opportunity to have many more snapshots of my life taken and each one will take me closer to my destiny. So knowing this, I have to refuse to get bogged down by this one singular picture in my hand right now.
Cos my life is not a snapshot. It’s a movie and when the credits roll, you will see that the Director was none other than the one and only…..Tyler Perry? No, I love him but I got better. I got Jesus Christ and come on! You know he is God all by His awesome self! And he is the director of the story of my life!!!!!! So for sure, my life, your life will (no matter what it looks like now) be one Oscar-winning production to the glory of God! So go on, be merry! Christmas is round the corner and everything is going to be just alright. Yes, it will!
Bola Essien-Nelson (aka Salt) is a blogger/author based in Lagos, Nigeria. You can connect with her via her blog – The Salt Chronicles on Blogger where she is ‘seasoning’ the world around her one salt blog at a time.
