I’m tired, but my mind is sort of keyed up and I can feel God trying to tell me something. It’s funny how God speaks in our times of weakness, when we’re tired, or when we’re hurting. These are all times when we meet our human limitations and begin to open ourselves up to God’s influence. We sometimes wonder how we are going to get from where we are right now in life (point A) to where we think we’re supposed to end up (point B).
It occurs to me tonight, at 8:42pm on Christmas Day, that perhaps the bigger problem with this thinking isn’t just that we’re establishing what we think point A and point B should be, as if we had ultimate control over our lives and this world, but that we’re assuming that our lives resemble a straight line in any direction.
I know that I’m on this planet for a reason. I’ve been given the gift of this amazing life that is uniquely my own. No one else gets to live my particular life. I don’t want to squander it. I don’t want to misuse it, and I certainly don’t want to get caught up in the minutia of life and end up missing the point.
I also don’t want to be so fixated on how far along life’s path I am, and how well I’m doing, that I forget to live life to the fullest. There’s a balance to be struck.
I was laying in bed tonight, wrestling with this balance, contemplating where I was between point A and point B, when God gave me the picture of a Connect-The-Dots puzzle. It occurred to me that maybe our lives are more like “connect-the-dots” than a straight line between two points. We live life from one dot to the next, and maybe it’s a semi-straight line from one dot to the next, but through it all, God sees the bigger picture.
I’m not sure I’ll see what the dots of my life are connecting to create until I get to Heaven and see things from the Father’s perspective, but for me, it’s easier to live life with a balanced perspective when I look at my life with the eternity-based understanding that my life, no matter how linear it may seem, is anything but.
My life intersects with the dots of other people’s lives, weaving a lasting tapestry. My choices determine whether the lines between the dots are jagged or flowing; whether the lives I touch are filled with love or hurt, and whether I spread some of the eternal hope that I have in Jesus.
The ultimate picture that these dots form does not matter. I have faith that my heavenly Father is an amazing artist, and that my dots matter. He will order them in the perfect way. I only need to be faithful in how I move from one dot to the next.
Image by Jonathan Fashbaugh
That’s an incredibly insightful metaphor, Jonathan. I can definitely look back on things in my life that didn’t make sense at the time but now are a perfectly clear part of the picture of my life that is continually being drawn. I especially like the image you included because it indicates multi-dimensional complexity of our lives. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Matthew. Yeah, I think the picture that our lives form is probably spiritually hidden like those stereoscopic pictures that used to be in malls. You know, the ones that you have to know how to look at in order for the image to become clear? I don’t know if we will actually get a 100% clear understanding of the picture until we’re home with God, but we can’t let that stop us from living a life that is saturated in the love of Christ, filled with faith that “God’s got this.”