What do you see when you look at life- ANTs or Lace?

When you look at this picture, what do you see?

I was scrolling through my facebook last week and on my newsfeed, my friend Tonya Stone who is a brilliant photographer with her own business, Stone Creative Photography, posted this photo.
Before reading the caption my immediate thought was - why is she posting a photo of a leaf with holes in it?
Now obviously the leaf has been nibbled away at by a very hungry insect and I started questioning why Tonya had thought it was a cool thing to take a photo of this.

However...then I read the caption that Tonya had beautifully written alongside the photo:

 

"This delicate heart shaped leaf reminds me of lace. Spend time in nature and really look at the shapes, patterns and textures. There is beauty and love everywhere."

 

What an eye opener this was for me! Tonya had challenged me on my thinking. And suddenly I felt God challenging me on my thinking. Tonya had a beautiful God perspective on creation - and I had missed it.

 

I had seen roughness where she had seen beauty. I had seen an ugly pattern, where she had seen the elegance of lace. I had seen something unrefined where she had seen love and loveliness.

 

In my psychology lecture this week, we have been talking about ANTs - Automatic Negative Thoughts. These ANTs are what can cause us to see the glass half empty. They can cause us to have a negative perspective on life and, if prevalent for long enough, they can eventually lead us into depression.

 

These ANTs are not of God either. Our God is good and lovely and beautiful and as one who created us, He wants us to have beautiful minds also. God challenges us on our thinking in Romans 12:2 :

 

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."

 

The pattern of this world is to look at life the opposite of how God sees it. And the pattern of how we can see ourselves is to look at ourselves the way the world sees us, not how God see us.

Do you know that when God looks at us, He doesn't see the holes, the scars and the ugly pattern that we see? He sees us as beautiful elegant lace. The heart that is scarred from a life of hardship and challenges is a heart that He sees as beautiful and lovely.

 

God doesn't view us the way the world does. And He doesn't want us to view life with Automatic Negative Thoughts. He wants us to invite the Holy Spirit to transform our minds so that we see life differently and have a new perspective on things. Where we once saw ugliness, He wants us to see beauty.

 

My challenge this week is to stop my ANTs in their track and ask God's Holy Spirit to transform my mind, so that I can see beauty in my everyday life.

 

What do you see when you look at life - ANTs or Lace?