You Can Only See From Where You're Standing

When I'm decorating our storefront windows, I'm working from the back. I know what I think I'm creating, but I have to jump out of the window repeatedly, go around and outside, and look at it from the sidewalk. That change of perspective helps me see the gaps in my display and how I need to move things around to help it look more put-together.

From inside the window, all you can see is that back of a hoodie and the nakedness of two trees. From back here, you'd think I hadn't done anything. It looks more like a work in progress than something beautiful I want to share with the community.

But from outside on the front porch, it's a snowy winter wonderland. The trees are lovely and decorated, the hoodie has our town name emblazoned across the front, and all the lights are twinkling brightly. This view, this angle, is what I had pictured in my mind. The back side, the working side, was all I could see in the process, but the front was the view I was working toward.

While my window doesn't necessarily translate to the deep, serious issues in your life, the concept remains the same. What side - and how many sides - are you looking at your situations from? Are you focused on the back of the trees, or have you walked around to the front to see what else is happening?

Unless we're looking at the situation from every angle, we'll never have the whole picture. And that's how criticism, judgement, and poor choices take over. That's how misunderstandings, resentment, and anger take root. That's how we get stalled in an opinion that may or may not necessarily encompass the whole truth.

The same applies to our trust and reliance on God knowing the entire picture of our life and the world around us. 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9


We see the very linear timeline of our past and present, and that's usually about it. God, on the other hand, has already mapped out everyone's past, present, and future, and has created it that way for very specific reasons. We just don't know what they are.

But if we're trusting that His ways are higher than our ways (which they absolutely are), and His thoughts are higher than ours (which they definitely are), then we can rest assured God already has our very best outcome planned. That's what a loving, gracious, merciful God does. And He is.

We won't see the whole picture this side of heaven, but one day we'll have the mind of Christ and understand the perspective He was seeing things from. I guarantee you it will be the 360-degree picture that He creates for our good and His glory.


And I can't wait to see then what He sees now!

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