Not A Pretty Picture

Not A Pretty PictureReader: Jon WatsonDate: 8th December 2022Passage: Jeremiah 17:9-------------------If you are like me you enjoy looking at the photographs people put up on Facebook. I think there is quite a competition among some folk to see just how dramatic they can make some of the places look — ones we know well — by using special lenses or drones. Sometimes, however, a picture comes up showing just how selfish people can be by leaving rubbish by the roadside or 'fly-tipping' at a beauty spot. Not a pretty picture!On a more serious note, the prophet Jeremiah wrote about the lives some of his people were living and that was not a pretty picture. This led him to give God's verdict on the way people look from the' inside' - the way God sees us. The human heart — that means the real person we are - "The human heart is most deceitful and desperately wicked". That is certainly not a pretty picture.Are we all like that? Well, the deceitful part is always telling us we are not all that bad, indeed we are quite good. But God tells us a different story. Without his salvation we are "dead, doomed for ever because of our many sins." Ephesians 2:1 (NLT). Not a pretty picture! But God in his mercy doesn't want to leave us like that like so much rubbish by the roadside "But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead." Ephesians 2:4-5 (NLT) It is God and only God who can change our wicked hearts through all that Jesus has done for us. A very different picture! Let's put all our hope and confidence in him alone.