PERSPECTIVE (Day 288)

Jesus said, “If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.”  Matthew 6:22-23

It’s late and she comes running to my bedroom…”Mommy, you have got to come see the moon!”  I look up at her – so tired – but I get up and follow behind her.  She takes me into the laundry room and says, “Look, do you see it?  Right there!  Mommy, the moon?”  I’m looking at the moon…it’s bright and beautiful but I’m not seeing what she is desperately trying to show me.  

She runs into her room and grabs a block.  This block opens up and has multiple pictures inside it.  She shows me the picture of the cross—it looks like a bridge and this cross leads to heaven with Jesus waiting there.  “Doesn’t it look like this?”

 

I still don’t see the moon looking like a bridge or a cross.  I bend down to look more closely at the block….I look back towards the moon.  I see what she sees now.  The moon has white beams forming a cross shining so brightly out of it.

I stand back up and look…it’s just a bright circular moon.

I bend back down and look….it’s a moon with white beams shooting out of it shaping itself into a cross.

 

The window!  It’s the window!  When I stand up straight, I am looking out of the top portion of the window and that part has no screen.  When I bend down to the bottom portion of the window – it has a screen.  This is the part of the window she is looking out of - because of her height…she sees the white beams shaping itself into a cross.  The screen makes the light of the moon form into a cross. Shift to see…

  

Perspective.  I bend back down and say to her, “I see it baby – I see it now.”  I pick her up so she can see why I didn’t see it at first.  She looks out the window and says, “Where did it go?”  I put her back down and she sees it.  Pick her back up and it’s gone.  I told her how the screen was making us see it differently - and then explained how changing our perspective – has the power to change everything.  

 

Perspective…when we change the way we see things we can change everything.  

Oh how I want to see Him in everything.  God sees us all the time…and it’s just a matter of focus for us, isn’t it?  It’s just a matter of shifting ourselves to see.  

Hagar wanted to save her son but they were out of water (read Genesis 21:8-20) and she couldn’t see the well.  “Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.” Gen. 21:19

Had I rushed in this moment with my daughter…I would have missed it.  I would have missed the opportunity to see – to talk to her about perspective.  To remind myself that most days I pray to see through the lens of Jesus, and most days I rush.  But this day, I saw.  I saw through different eyes.  

“If you don’t fight for joy, it’s your children who lose.” ~Ann Voskamp

  

I could have missed this moment with my daughter.  I could have just looked up and said, “Yes, honey it’s beautiful.”  Because it was beautiful.  But by shifting my focus and seeing it the way she saw it changed everything.  I wonder if we can look at our moments with God’s eyes – and see things from a new perspective – how we might react to things in our daily lives.

When my eyes are good – my whole body will be full of light.  

Through the lens of Jesus we can be hunters of beauty in everything.