What You See and What You Don't
Lord willing, we'll pick back up with our series on confidence on Monday, but for today, I want to revisit a topic I mentioned a couple of months ago. In the devotion entitled, Up Close and Personal, I discussed macro photography, which focuses on an image and makes it larger than life, allowing the viewer to make out every detail. In that post, we looked at how our relationship with God depends on our willingness to get close enough to Him to make out every detail of His nature.
Today, I want to focus, oddly enough, on the part of macro photography that is not in focus. By zeroing in so tightly on the object of the picture, the photographer makes the choice to leave everything else in a bit of a haze. The single red flower stands out vividly while the rest of the field blurs in the background. That is the nature of macro photography. In order for the main object to stand out in great detail, all other objects must be obscured from view. Only then will the focal point truly be the focal point.
As I recently viewed several images taken with macro photography, the lyrics to an old hymn began to play in the back of my mind. "Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace." Looking to Jesus is macro photography at its best. When we focus our attention on the Lord, everything else fades into the background. The troubles seem so insignificant. The giants look so small. The extraordinary becomes ordinary.
We, however, tend to make the wrong things the object of our portrait. We focus on the money problems and the unfulfilling career. We spend our time and energy trying to figure things out, to make things work, to stretch the budget or cut the costs. We run around like Chicken Little, constantly fearing the world is caving in on us. Thus, our portrait is one of panic and misery, and the only thing that fades from view is God, blurred into the background because He is out of focus.
Funny, the online dictionary defines tunnel vision as "defective sight in which objects cannot be properly seen if not close to the center of the field of view." Defective sight. Broken. Wrong. But when it comes to walking the Christian life, I think we should have tunnel vision, and right in the center of our field of view is Jesus. That's not to say we should ignore our family or our obligations, but if we'll keep our eyes on Christ, He will enable us to do what we need to do and in such a way as will produce peace instead of stress, grace instead of frustration, and joy instead of drudgery.
A blessed life boils down to what you see and what you don't. So, what are you focused on today?
“Unto thee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens.”