Life doesn’t need the filter we think it needs.

Life is beautiful. Life is ugly. Life is easy, and it’s complicated. A new day full of promise and adventure can end in disaster and loss. Life can guarantee love, friendship and success in the same instance that it gives you hatred, loneliness and failure. It can be all you’ve ever wanted as well as nothing you’ve ever expected.

As we are now halfway through the year 2016, every social media site and picture editing app has a choice of filters to enhance any image that we post to describe what our unique life looks like. I find myself lately taking photos and not liking the filter choices I have. I don’t know if my view is changing or what the difference is, but I feel like maybe appreciating beauty for its natural appearance is more satisfying (or real) than trying to change it.

In these new editing apps, life’s ugliness and even its beauty has now gained opportunity to be filtered and result in something that isn’t real.

But really this living that we are doing does not need a human-made, Instagram-worthy, fancy-named filter. The only filter this life needs is one that God is already using— the filter of grace and mercy. God created this planet and formed each of us from head to toe from hair that glints golden in one light to dirty blonde in another. He formed you and me to look individually different in the smallest and largest of differences. Even when identical twins have different personalities, some can still be unidentifiable in looks. God also formed the awkward toes, the crooked fingers and the lazy eyes, and he formed the big personalities, the quiet recluses and the chatty talkers. More than that, God knew that sin would mar His creation and create a mess that no human could clean up and fix.

That is why He sent his son, Jesus. He died on the cross and ultimately made the way in which someone could have forgiveness and clean up the “sin-mess” in their lives. But still that doesn’t stop the life we live from being messy and ugly; it does not promise a perfect and easy road ahead. Others' “sin-messes” in life have created consequences that have snowballed into greater messes over the years, and every human being is subject to slipping on those big puddles.

That’s why God sent His son. That’s why He over and over gives us His grace and mercy. I once heard that grace is described as getting what we don’t deserve, and mercy is described as not getting what we do deserve.

I have seen grace and mercy in my life as filters that change the way in which God sees me. He sees me through His grace to forgive me when I still mess up and can’t seem to make a day go perfect. He sees me through His mercy to allow me to ask forgiveness and not receive the punishment that my sin should yield.

As we live through life, I’m not calling for everyone to stop using their Instagram filters or any filters. I still use mine sometimes! What I’m saying is that maybe we should view life and view others in the way God views us through grace and mercy. Using these filters might mean a change of heart, it might mean a change of thinking, and it might even mean a change in how you live altogether.

Grace and mercy are the only filters in life that offer hope and forgiveness, a kind of perfect beauty that others cannot amount to. In the Bible, 1 Peter 5:10 says, “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” The results of God’s grace are passed onto us, so that we can pass them on to others. This filter of grace restores, confirms, strengthens and establishes.

Without God using His filter, His view is like a lens. He sees each and every one of us more clearly than we see each other and better than we see ourselves. He knows every thought; He knows every wrong intent.

Filters often warp what is actually being viewed. But God’s filter isn’t exactly warped; He still, through His lens, sees me and all my sin but continues to love me. Instead, He uses grace and mercy to look past (to filter) all that is wrong in my life to lead me towards what is right and furthermore, to what I really need—Him.

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” Hebrews 4:16.