We get locked into seeing things a certain way. Our world taints the colorscale in ways we don’t even know. We are all part of the system we live in and it’s difficult to see things from another perspective.
We were in Belize on a mission trip. One of the projects they asked us to work on was to build a bridge over the river that separated the village, in years past, a hurricane had washed it out. They paid for the materials and we helped the do the work. It was a simple task really. Three utility poles in a foundation and a deck with rails. When it came time to finish the deck, we did what most Americans do when you finish the decking, we snapped a chalk line, took out a skill saw and made a nice even edge (no board cut more than a 1/4 of an inch). It was beautiful for a moment, then the eruption.
A different perspective and the realization that you just crossed a boundary you didn’t know was there. The local men who had helped pay for that wood were livid that we would just cut off the ends of those boards and throw them away like trash, how dare you??? It was a chest to chest discussion with extreme tension. One person satisfied with a job well done, another extremely upset with the waste and disregard for resources.
It’s in those moments of reaction that you discover a view very different from your own. It really is quite shocking in those moments and difficult to not offer a reaction in kind. The picture above, what is it? CGI, snapshot from the blue world of tron? This photo encapsulates much of what I love in something that catches my attention, symmetrical, quirky, disctinctive. It’s fun to look at for a moment, but in the end people want to know what they are looking at, no seriously what am I looking at… no seriously.
Well, what you are looking at is… typical for us. The need to complete the picture, answer the question, make the unknown, known. If I can do that, I can make sense of the world around me. If it makes sense I can relax, I tell myself. There is a fallacy in thinking that an irrational mind wants a rational answer. An irrational mind can only accept an irrational answer, thus the run on toilet paper.
What it is…is a learning opportunity. The realization that freedom is often another perspective away. The weight we carry today, will be found out tomorrow as unnecessary. Very often this is what the Lord wants for us, an easy yoke, when our perspective offers a heavy one.. Very often it’s difficult to see what you can’t see, so we build a panic big enough for our trouble.
When I look at the world around me, what do I see? What does God see? What does faith see? What does fear see? Often in the midst of seeing things our way we make accusations of God that drive us further away from the solution. May it not be so.
As for the picture, well it’s a fish eye lense taking in a lot of blue. Sit in the joy of not knowing, just take it in as an interesting new perspective. At this point, the tension of learning is more important than the answer.
Truth, Grace, and Time 