keep it in perspective
Lately I have been reminded of the importance of keeping things in perspective. I’ve sort of been stumbling around in a haze in my life, with all kinds of decisions surrounding me, and the feeling like I need to take action on ALL of them now. It’s enough to make a girl want to lock herself in her house with coffee and books and lots and lots of blank notebooks. Sometimes I really do think life would be so much easier if I kept to myself and managed a very small and predictable world of my own creation. But how incredibly drab and devoid of variety and “ahhh” moments and tears and belly-laughs that kind of world would be! So I press on, forging through the fog and confusion and uncertainty, trusting fully that my God and His grace is more than enough to sustain me and satisfy my longings better than I ever imagined.As I move forward, I look around me, and through the mist I see that I am traveling through an awe-inspiring landscape. I catch brief glimpses of mountains and as I reflect on their enormity I realize how small I really am. I have been spending a lot of time in the Psalms lately, and God has been reminding me that, in spite of how accomplished or capable I may feel, I am in actuality just dust. My days are like grass … at times I get distracted by feelings of self-importance, as if the future of the whole world depends on whether I pursue this or follow that desire. But then I read verses like Psalm 103:16, and I am smacked in the face with the truth that all of my achievements and successes are like flowers in the field that can be blown away with one big gust of wind. When all is said and done, none of those things will be remembered.
My soul has been consumed lately with a longing for something more, and I am coming to recognize that the “more” that I crave is nothing that can be found here. There is a land that lies just past the horizon, a place of such indescribable beauty that my mind can barely conceive of its existence. It’s tempting sometimes to think so much on that destination that I no longer desire to continue the journey on which I travel now. My heart grows faint and I (like David) call out to God to lead me to the “rock that is higher than I”. Take me away from this wasteland, Lord, and carry me into the splendor and brightness of that land beyond. But He doesn’t. I’m still here. And lately I have been reminded that I really don’t have it so bad.
I am not a news-watcher. But lately I haven’t been able to stop reading stories about what is going on in the world that exists outside of Krista-land. If anything will help to put these into perspective pretty quickly, it’s stories of what is going on in those far-away lands like Lebanon, Iraq, Indonesia, and other places. Of course it’s easier if I don’t watch the news and don’t think about the thousands of people whose lives are being changed or even lost, but it’s not reality. It sort of makes my little decisions pale in comparison, when I hear stories about worlds being ripped apart as they are. I don’t even know how to pray for these lands or these people or what is going on there, but I can’t stop praying about these things. And when I do so, the whole idea that “I am dust” really becomes even more solid.
Even now, to think about the things that are happening, something like posting on a blog doesn’t really seem all that important. It almost seems like a joke, the things that I do: coming to work to sit in an office, talking on the phone to mentors and kids, filling out spreadsheets and replying to emails. Right now, at this moment, there is someone dying simply because of the fact that they happen to live on a certain street in a certain country, and that street happened to match the coordinates set by a person launching a rocket, with the express purpose of taking the lives of others. I’m not even sure that words do justice to what I’m feeling right now, so I’m going to stop …
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