WHAT SELFIES SAY ABOUT GOD'S GRACE

On Tuesday, Oxford Dictionaries announced the 2013 word of the year: selfie. 

For the record, Oxford Dictionaries defines selfies as such: a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website. According to their researchers, the term has seen a 17,000% increase in usage over the last year.

Personally, I'm not into selfies. Nothing against them; I just don't see the need for them like others do, maybe because I'm a little camera shy.

However, when I heard the news of the announcement, I knew immediately this would be the subject of Thursday's (I mean Friday's) column, for there is something about the selfie that I want to challenge you to consider next time you look at a selfie of yourself. What I want you to consider is at the root of your understanding about God and God's love for you. What I want you to consider about your selfie I would say speaks volumes about your faith. What I want you to consider is one simple little question:

When you look at your selfie, who do you see?

My friends, as you get ready to enter into the holiday week, I want to remind you all of probably the most important thing you must not only know but embody:

You are a beloved child of God, loved not for who you are or what you do.

When we look at pictures of ourselves, be it a selfie or other, we often fall into the temptation to focus on ourselves - what we like and what we don't like; what people might think or not think.

Nothing could be more contrary to the Christian faith. 

We are called to not focus on ourselves but on God's love for us. Let us focus on the fact that we were known before we were formed in the womb. Let us focus on the fact that God knows that our natural state is to run away from the divine. Let us focus on the fact that God loves us even in the midst of our disobedience. Let us focus on the fact that God's love for us even in the midst of disobedience is so strong that through the life, death, and resurrection of his only son, Christ our Lord, we do not have to live estranged from our creator, for by his love (not our efforts) we offered the chance to be made whole.

Celebrate the selfie. Celebrate it not because it's about you - for, my friends, it, like everything else in life, is about God.

So, while many will look at the selfie as being all about them, you and I know better.

The selfie is about the embodiment of God's grace, for without God's grace there is no self.

Grace and Peace, Lamar