Ever since cameras were invented with their ability to reproduce moments with remarkable detail, we have been enthralled with these photographs that can capture a scene so perfectly it’s like we have been transported to that exact spot. Indeed, through pictures with their incredibly lifelike detail, we feel as if we were there ourselves, right in the thick of it, living that moment. But however skilled a photographer and however expensive and technologically sophisticated their camera equipment is, at the end of the day, a picture is still only the tiniest sliver of what really happened. A picture is a specific frame from one angle and from one vantage point of one fraction of a second. It can be a lovely, beautiful window into a particular time and place, but it is a window only. For one thing, a picture is limited to sight only. We can’t hear or smell or feel anything going on in the picture. But we also can’t look around, or roll back the clock to a different moment. Like a butterfly, once fluttering about in a lively and carefree manner, but now pinned flat and desiccated and lifeless to a page, the scene captured by a camera is a shadow of the real thing. Many of us carry around in our minds and in our hearts a picture of what the perfect life for us would look like. It is a beautiful picture, one we can’t help but take out and look at over and over. And part of the beauty for us is that this picture is static and frozen, unchanged and unchangeable. But as lovely as this “picture perfect” is, it’s not something that we can achieve, nor is it something that we should want to realize. If we were to become “picture perfect” we would have to freeze ourselves to that one moment in time from that very specific angle and vantage point. We are not meant to be pinned to some dusty old book. We are free to choose what the living, breathing, messy version of perfection looks like in our day to day lives. Our Heavenly Father is perfect. Jesus Christ is perfect. They are not static. They are not frozen in time. Their perfection is so much bigger and more vibrant and alive than any picture could contain. Perfection is something that we must embody, something that must move through us as we move through it. There is not a single, correct angle and vantage point from which perfection may be realized. We are going to find perfection in lots of places that aren’t picturesque and that can’t even be seen by most people. A lot of perfection is going to be so much bigger than sight and pictures anyway. It’s going to be filled with sounds and smells and feelings that words can’t describe and pictures can't capture. We can try to manufacture perfection by adjusting the lighting and arranging all of the correct props and scenery and contorting ourselves into that just right pose, but why would we trade the whole wide world of possibilities for one perfect picture? We keep staring at that picture for too long and we’re going to notice all of the flaws that we thought we got rid of, and then we’ve got to throw away that one perfect picture and try to get it right again, but we’ll just get sick of that one and try to make another one. I hope we can all learn to break out of the frames that we so often use to box ourselves in and stop chasing after perfection because we are already in the middle of perfection right now from moment to moment and from every single angle and vantage point.
