“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”– Isaiah 55:8-9
One of the concepts I think I’ve been wrestling to remember is the concept of life being a movie, not a snap shot. Let me try to explain what I mean.
I can look around and it seems like something must be wrong because XYZ, God doesn’t know what He is doing because (insert struggle), this one thing will never happen, this other thing will never change, there must be something wrong with me cause (yep insert thoughts here), and on and on and on. In reality, what I am doing with the above rationalizing is taking a “snap shot” from today, staring at it and drawing conclusions for the future based on this moment in time. It is as if I’m looking at today like a Polaroid and holding that photo in front of my face as I travel into tomorrow (or maybe even slapping the darn picture against my forehead – beating hope down with unmet expectations of today!).
What we don’t see when we only look at today and our yesterdays, is the vast expanse of tomorrow.
Tomorrow holds all things and nothing. It’s a blank space. It is not measured or constrained by all we’ve known to be true so far. Today has zero implications on what’s possible tomorrow.
Life, and Faith, are never mere moments in time, they are long journeys with unexpected twists, turns, beginnings and endings we cannot predict.
So I share this as someone who has far from learned how to live in the expanse of a movie life created by God. I share this as one who hopes to day after day, moment by moment remind my Polaroid flinging self with sweet kindness “Tomorrow is a new day. God’s view is much much higher than what you can see from ground level. This moment is a snap shot of something much grander.”
A great image I heard from Matt Chandler this week in his message for the Village Church was that our view is like if we had our face pressed strongly against a stained glass window. From our perspective it looks like a lot of jagged edges and broken pieces. But we can’t see the view from far way, the beautiful image our moment is a part of.
So let us try to remember, we can guess about tomorrow, we can speculate by drawing on what we know so far, we can predict how everything could go…but if we did, we would be forgetting the possibilities a life of Faith, a life filled with tomorrows and not just yesterdays, has for us. Let’s remember that in all our planning, all our guessing, (or all our stressing,) that there’s a bigger view.
There’s a movie and this is just one scene. There’s a flower and this is just a petal. There is a beautiful shore and this is just a grain of sand. There’s a novel and this is just a page. And if you haven’t read that novel’s end yet? Well let me tell you… it ends in paradise.
“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but….the Lord’s purpose prevails.” – Prov. 19:21
“After you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.” 1 Peter 5:10
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Rev. 21:4
This is not a once and done practice. It’s continual. So will you choose to remember with me? And if so, will you remind me to do the same?
