Perspective

Allow me to tell you a little story, which took place in my bathroom... I was 'busy' the other night, and for some reason, I leant over towards the sink, to get something, and the plug fell from the sink, and down towards the big skirting board panelling, behind which the pipes run. From where I was sitting, there was a big gap between it and the wall, and I thought it had went down in behind the panelling. So when I was finished, I tried to move the panelling to find the plug, but couldn't get the panelling removed. The plug was gone.

But the other night I was doing a bit of clearing, and had the brush in the bathroom, and getting it all a bit tidier (seeing I might be leaving soon...), and behold! The plug was sitting on top of the panelling, but in a place I couldn't have seen it before... right in behind where the toilet was. So then I tried to see how it could have ended up there, rather than going down behind the panelling, and when I was at the sink, looking down at the path it would have taken, I realised that the crack wasn't big enough for it to slip through from that angle - it must have hit the top of the panelling and rolled along out of sight.

Which got me thinking about perspective. How you see something is linked to how it affects you. The missing plug was a relative disaster from my first perspective, but once I saw it from a different perspective, it couldn't have been missing! In a much bigger way, things can happen to us that we don't understand or think are total disasters - at the time they are. From our perspective, they seem to be. We can't see the big picture. Imagine standing in the centre of Belfast - you can only see the small bit around you... but if you go to the top of Cave Hill, or the Pond Park Road in Lisburn and look down, you can see the whole city!

Isaiah 55:8-9 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God's perspective is different to ours - when we're going through things, it can seem as if they are going wrong, and they don't make sense. But we have the promise of God: 'And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.' (Romans 8:28)

Things can seem hard at the time, and you might not understand them, but stick in there... God knows what is happening, and works for the good of those who love him in everything that happens!