Thoughts on perspective and what I cannot see

I have a favorite tree. When we moved to Idaho fifteen years ago the majority of our one and a half acres were not landscaped. Every tree, shrub and flower was placed by me in it's specific location. I went to the nursery one day with my landscaper and stopped in my tracks when I came upon this tree. I said "I LOVE that tree! I want one." To which he replied that it probably wouldn't live too long but if I had to have it okay. So with his help the tree was placed outside my bedroom window and I see it every day through the eyes of every season, every storm, every growth ... but that's not the point of this story. The tree has for many years given me life lessons and today I'm using it to illustrate something I've been ruminating on for a while.

When my youngest son was in first grade we realized he had dyslexia and we took him to a special training program where it was explained to him that he had a special gift that enabled him to see the world from just about every perspective imaginable and it was impairing his ability to read, not because he saw too little, but because he saw too much. In the program he basically modeled words out of clay and once he had explored the word that way it was locked in his brain. The trainer showed him his gift by having him close his eyes and imagine a scooter and describe it to her. I soon realized that I had the same gift as do many of us. I can examine an object and when I close my eyes I can see it from just about every vantage point imaginable. I can see it looking down, I can see it looking up, I can see it from the side and on and on. The longer I consider it, the more perspectives I can see, and they are all different! Just like my favorite tree. Here are just six pictures of the tree and you can see each perspective is vastly different than the one before.

I have noticed that within the context of the physical universe I have this sort of natural ability to look at a thing from a lot of different perspectives BUT when it comes to relationships I can be very rigid about my perspective. So I often practice this ability with objects as a way of reminding myself that this can be practiced with relationships. When I zoom out of the immediacy of my relational context or crisis and look at it (an event, or altercation, or circumstance, or whatever) from a different vantage point or perspective it enables me to enter into the relationship differently. This is not something I am naturally good at, but it is a work of Christ in my life to zoom out and consider the situation differently before I zoom back in. It is a process and a skill I hope to continue to get better at because it frees me up to love the people in my life way better than when I am maintaining my own rigid finite perspective.

For many long months I have sputtered along with this gut wrenching knock the wind out of me heartache. I am still gasping for breath. I have examined the greatest disappointment of my life and attempted to look at it from every perspective imaginable, and not one perspective has brought comfort or relief from the nagging gut wrenching pain, just more unanswerable questions. And it occurs to me that my perspective is limited by the constructs of time and space. There is another dimension that I cannot see. Even when I momentarily tried to write God out of the picture, I could not find a perspective that made sense of the human story. And so full circle I have come, to belief in a gracious, good, omnipotent God, who laid the foundations of the earth (Job 38:4), who's written a ginormous story and given each of us a small part to play. 

The task for today is to believe that there is a rhyme and reason for it all even when I cannot see it. I think this must be what Paul means in I Corinthians 13:12 "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." I don't see it all. I cannot see it all. I live within the context of time and space and there exists a dimension outside of what I can see. Some day I will fully know it, I don't know it today; but sometimes I am privileged to catch glimpses of glory as it passes me by. 

Dostoevsky nailed it when he wrote:

"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened."

Today I choose to believe that something so precious will come to pass and already has outside the realm of time and space, I know that my eyesight is poor,so I trust that a big God has it all figured out even though it hurts so bad.