Your Good, Your Bad and Ugly

Instagram filters are great, and thanks to my daughters' know-how, I'm also familiar with the fun of Snapchat filters. These filters add a soft glow, erase blemishes, and highlight our best features. We are all guilty of posting the "highlight reel" of our life on social media, and filters sure are helpful for displaying our beautiful sides. It's exhausting, isn't it? Editing out the bad and ugly and watching the likes and comments come in? Thank goodness for a God who doesn't just handle our good, bad and ugly, but truly wants us to bring the bad and ugly to His feet. He wants our praises and gratitude, but He also desires to hear our burdens, our heartbreaks, our trials and tribulations. Our best friends and closest family members know what we look like at the end of a long day, in sweatpants, with our makeup scrubbed off. They know the real us, filter-free. How much more does our Creator who spoke us into being and placed His divine fingerprints all over our DNA know our most authentic selves? We have a God who is beckoning us to bring it ALL to him. My friend Amy Grant has a beautiful song called "Better Than A Hallelujah," that is such a sweet reminder of who our God sees us. Meditate on it, listen to it, and then lay it at His feet. "Better Than A Hallelujah" God loves a lullaby In a mother's tears in the dead of night Better than a Hallelujah sometimes God loves the drunkard's cry The soldier's plea not to let him die Better than a Hallelujah sometimes We pour out our miseries God just hears a melody Beautiful, the mess we are The honest cries of breaking hearts Are better than a Hallelujah The woman holding on for life The dying man giving up the fight Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes The tears of shame for what's been done The silence when the words won't come Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes We pour out our miseries God just hears a melody Beautiful the mess we are The honest cries of breaking hearts Are better than a Hallelujah Better than a church bell ringing Better than a choir singing out, singing out We pour out our miseries God just hears a melody Beautiful, the mess we are The honest cries of breaking hearts Are better than a Hallelujah We pour out our miseries God just hears a melody Beautiful, the mess we are The honest cries of breaking hearts Are better than a Hallelujah (Better than a Hallelujah sometimes) Better than a Hallelujah (Better than a Hallelujah sometimes)