Sundays are Picture Days

We recently had family pictures taken.  To say it was an ordeal would be an understatement.  With an appointment at 4pm, we literally spent our entire Saturday getting ready.  For me, my wife and our two little boys, outfits had to be chosen and subsequently ironed.  Baths and showers needed to be taken.  Hair had to be styled.  Ears needed extra cleaning and teeth needed extra brushing.  It all came together in the end, but the process was a struggle for sure.  (One of the resulting pictures is below.)

The more I reflect on this experience, the more I realize just how far many pictures are from reality.  Most days our youngest has yogurt stuck to his face and our oldest has sucker-colored drool on his shirt.  My wife usually has her hair pulled back, while I regularly have a headphone-shaped ridge across my head from working on the radio all day.  We never wear white and I can't remember the last time all four of us were in jeans at the same time.  Probably never.  At any given moment, one of the four of us is almost always screaming, crying, or spitting up.  Sometimes all of the above.

Yet, despite knowing that our new family picture couldn't be further from reflecting reality, we still have a giant-sized copy of it hanging on our wall.  We love it.  It was taken at the perfect angle, with the perfect lighting and was probably even Photoshopped a little.  You can't really see my double-chin or the scar on my two year old's nose.  Heather's hair is blowing gently in the wind, and our littlest guy is looking directly at the camera.  It's, literally, a perfect photo.  But it's an impossible standard to regularly live up to.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Sundays are "picture days" for most Christians.  Each week we spend inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to get everybody "together" (physically, emotionally and spiritually) for the expressed purpose of creating a picture.  Not a picture to hang on our wall, mind you...but a picture to hang in the minds of those we attend church with. The picture of a perfect family.

Somehow, we've gotten it all backward.  If we can't be ourselves at church, something's wrong.  If we can't walk through those doors just as we are, then perhaps the church isn't really what it claims to be.  Unless I misunderstand, the church is not called to be perfect, but to be a collection of imperfect people in need of a Savior.  Morally messy and spiritually stained.

In fact, trying to come across any other way is a pretty big stain in and of itself.