Sometimes I wonder if God looks at us the way I look at someone doing a bad job at parallel parking. You stand there and see them driving up over the curb and yet you can’t somehow convey when they should turn the wheel to the right or the left or move backwards or forwards.
That’s what happens when I lose all perspective on my life. I can’t get a hold of that God’s-eye view that would make things clear. I was thinking of this the other day, mired in worries about all the stuff I had to get done that wasn’t getting done.
All at once I remembered an evening not so long ago when I was laboring under the same sort of loss of perspective. As I was rushing home, feeling inadequate to some task, I paused and looked in the window of my home.
There on a winter’s night, I could see my family. One son was doing his homework at the kitchen table, his tongue between his teeth, another was dashing through the living room with a model airplane in his hand and Carol stood at the stove stirring something good—soup? spaghetti? The kitchen windows were just starting to steam up.
“Wow, aren’t I lucky?” I thought. “Aren’t I blessed?” Pausing for just a minute, I could see how much I had to be grateful for. All that noise in my head quieted down. I’d suddenly found that God’s-eye view. Everything made sense.
This week promises to be killingly busy. May I never lose that sense of how lucky I am or how much I’ve been given. All the rest is like parallel parking. Turning my wheel to the right at just the right time.
Rick Hamlin is the executive editor at GUIDEPOSTS.
