A Glimpse of Heaven: Perspective
There are things in our lives that simply must be done. Sometimes out of obedience, other times out of necessity. Regardless, we all know that Life is full of the mundane.
The beauty of God’s love for us is that He promises to provide purpose in the midst of the mundane. Even in duress, Job admitted that God’s purposes cannot be thwarted (Job 42:2). And much like Job, we may never fully know or grasp the purpose of our ordinary and extraordinary experiences on this side of Heaven. And sometimes, the “not knowing” can feel unfair.
I tend to reason with God, that if He would only reveal His purposes for my life or my current difficult circumstances, I would be more prepared and more successful in accomplishing those purposes. I am fully convinced, in my finite mind, that this is indeed a good way to motivate me to higher, more holy performance (on His behalf, of course…).
However, God’s ways are not my ways – no matter how convinced I am that my way is more efficient. (Can we all just pause for a moment and think about how cocky I really am? {sigh})
If it is true that God’s purposes cannot be thwarted, then He is not worried about His purposes being fulfilled. He knows that He will accomplish all that He desires and He knows exactly what it takes to bring about those purposes. No, the end result is not His concern; It is the process of accomplishing that purpose – in whatever form God provides – which occupies His heart and mind Today. Whether I think it is efficient or not, it is through the process of living day-to-day in acceptance and obedience which is the avenue through which my vision is more acutely focused away from the productions and towards the personhood of God.
Because, you see, God is not only in the business of redeeming our souls. He is also keenly concerned with the work of renewing our being – even before we reach Heaven’s shore. He is carefully and mysteriously “making all things new” – little by little, day by day, mystery by mystery. He is not concerned with the end product of saving our souls from death, hell, and the grave. That has been settled – at the cross. In the here and now, He is working on taking the old, and making it new – and that includes changing how I see myself, Him, and the world around me.
It is only in this ongoing renewal process where the scales fall from our eyes, so that we learn what it means to “live by faith, not by sight”. Our vision is being renewed, not by a sudden miracle, but by a faithful obedience. It feels small and hard at times, as if God has forgotten or doesn’t care. But, this cannot be any further from the truth. God is simply using His mysterious ways to accomplish His glorious ends. And in the process, He’s allowing us to gain Kingdom perspective: He is God, and we are not – and that is ok.
It’s this perspective that protects us from taking glory from God and wearing it as our own. It’s this proper perspective of who God is, and who we are, that allows us to know Him more fully and to rely more readily on Him with all that we are. It’s the obedience – in the simple and confusing tasks of Today – that prepares our hearts to honor Him rightly, without being tainted by our preference to perform for Him.
God is more concerned with our perspectives than with our purposes. He has established His purposes for our lives and has all power and wisdom to see them through to fulfillment. For our current part in His great plan, He is steadily, faithfully changing our vision: bringing clarity to our cloudy discernment of His Word, establishing true depth to our distorted proportions of our own importance, and removing the discolored lenses that we use to view others. He’s in the business of renewing our sight. As we let Him handle the results, we are able to more clearly see a God who can truly be trusted to accomplish His purposes in our lives, our loved ones, and in our world. And our souls can truly find rest in seeing, knowing, and being known by this God who is able and faithful to accomplish it all...until we see Him face-to-face.