The Bigger Picture

Remember those pictures with the hidden pictures inside of them? Can’t remember what they were called, (magic eye?), but I can remember staring at one in my uncle’s house, trying to relax my eye (as he instructed irritatingly) so as to see the second image concealed within the obvious picture. 

Thinking about life this morning, and how we can become so intent on seeing the detail, the smaller pictures in our lives, that we lose sight of the bigger picture. I know I’ve been writing about perspective recently but maybe it’s just a theme in my life at the moment. 

As a mother, I want my kids’ lives to run smoothly and if there is a problem, I want to fix what I can and then watch God fix what I can’t. I do my pathetic bit and pray increasingly fervent and frustrated prayers if the problem isn’t going away. I lose sight of the bigger picture and I lose sight of the generous God who has given us life. 

This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. The first line of one of the first choruses I learned after being born again, and it comes back to me usually in the teeth of a storm. 

There is no physical storm today but in the lives of a couple I love the storm rages on. We all search the horizon for a break in the storm clouds but sometimes it seems all we see are yet more black clouds piling up. 

An Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk, wrote, ‘Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour’. He wrote that not while lounging on a sun-drenched beach but when devastation and starvation loomed large. That is not easy. But today, I face neither devastation nor starvation, so how can I do any less? I will rejoice in the Lord; I will be joyful in God my Saviour. 

Jesus is the bigger picture. Today I will get lost in him. This is the day he has made. I will rejoice and be glad in him.