The past couple weeks I’ve been relapsing up and back down the wazoo (health-wise)… and consequently doing a lot of escaping into fiction or struggling just to get through daily tasks. It’s been a rough time. And in the midst of all the pain and turmoil, I’ve been meditating on perspective. Here’s the view from my back deck.
Quite often, when I look at my life, this is all I see–the thorns. I complain about all the difficulties, the exhaustion, the hard work, etc., etc. And then, every so often, God reminds me that this isn’t the whole picture. If I looked around, maybe I would see something like this.
This is also from my back deck. All my lovely thorns come with something amazing. God allows difficult times because they can flower into something beautiful, and when I take the time to examine my surroundings, I can see glimmers of the amazing all around.
Perspective… a frame for everything we experience… a choice to see something a certain way. In my mind, perspective is like a habit. So rather than wearing down a path to view my thorns by complaining and focusing on the negative, I’m trying to discipline myself to see God’s grace at work in my life. My roses are things like having a wonderful husband, children I delight in, a place to live that’s perfect for my health issues, a calling that makes me more myself, a past that makes me desperate for God, an unwillingness to be content with the mediocre, friends who listen… the list goes on and on. How about you?
God, open our eyes to see You at work. Rip aside the veil of our apparently mundane trivialities and show us Your hand and Your grace. Expose the roses in our lives, God. Give us a hunger for more than just surviving the thorns. Perfect us through those thorns. I love You! In Jesus’ Name, amen.
