God Wants to Give You the Blessing of Perspective

I hesitate to broach the following conversation because every time I mention how much I dislike spiders my Facebook wall gets flooded with images of the little monsters, compliments of people who call me friends. And yet they enjoy harassing me. What is that?

You’d think I’d skirt the subject entirely, and I would— if Father God would keep his spiders out of my state, my house, and my kayak. I’ve already had to knowingly share one of my early morning kayak rides this Spring with one of His spiders because the evil thing decided to come out of hiding a great distance from a dock and my remaining option was to bail. Not that I didn’t consider it because that spider was the size of a small purse dog. You’re rolling your eyes, aren’t you? Phil does that about my spider thing, too.

That hardworking farmer of mine could retire if he had a dollar for every time I’ve hollered at him from another room because I’ve spotted a spider and it’s trying to get me. 

“It’s not trying to get you,” Phil says. Whatever.

Listen, I admit I could use perspective on God’s spiders, but I’ll also freely confess right here that I perspective, period. All the time. About everything. If you’ll forgive me for being blunt, so do you.

This perpetual need of perspective is one of the countless blessings I’ve found of keeping my eyes trained on Jesus. Here’s the simplest way I know to say it. We’re constantly presented with two options. When our eyes aren’t on Jesus, self is in charge by default. And, oh boy, then we’re looking at things through our own skewed lens.

I know my “self” can turn a careless comment into an accusation and sometimes into always. When my eyes are on me, I can feel unappreciated and misunderstood. Just being honest. On the other hand, when my eyes are on God, I can experience the joy of knowing I’m loved and understood by my good good Father.

Where do you go for perspective?