Many of us will have New Years resolutions and goals and expectations for 2022. That is a positive step that can help with purpose. It’s great to have something that you’re always working toward.
But I just want to remind us that no matter what comes, whether it is good or bad, highs or lows, whether you accomplish your goals or fall short, or whether your expectations are met or not, the important thing is to trust God and His timing.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says:
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
The part in the passage that is interesting is “Lean NOT on your own understanding.” So, what does “your own understanding” imply?
Well, it’s kind of like the picture below:
Do you know what it is? Looks to me like a “Snowcapped mountain with dark clouds on the left, and maybe a brush fire on the side.” What do you see? It’s a quite blurry picture being zoomed in, but can you figure it out?
If we zoom out, we can see that it is just a small portion of a larger picture. The big picture is Spiderman crouching on a bridge overlooking a city. In fact, that white box is the framing of the first picture. Who could’ve imagined what else was outside of the framing of that blurry picture?! In truth, there was much more to see.
Sometimes we’re so zoomed in with our own perspective. So certain we understand life amidst our limited human vantage point. The first picture was so blurry. It was difficult to make out what we were looking at.
It’s amazing how we can be so zoomed in on the picture of our lives. So zoomed in that we can see pixels…and though the picture is blurry, we still get fixated on our perspective of the picture of our lives. We get anxious about our understanding of the picture. We base our whole lives upon our minuscule perspective of that picture.
God is telling us to take a step back. He is encouraging us to trust in His timing. It’s such a challenge to see God’s perspective. It’s easier said than done.
Believe me. I have extreme trouble in trusting God’s timing. There have been things in my life that I had hoped would be expedited and completed by now. There have been a few things in my life that I’ve been waiting on for years. But it doesn’t change the fact that God is in control, and I need to trust in His timing. We all do.
So, as we have stepped into 2022, let us also take a step back to see more of God’s Perspective. Let us grasp God’s vantage point. I pray that it will lessen the anxieties, the worries, and the fears that we may have as we begin this New Year. May God help you see the big picture of your life, which in turn will give you peace about the year to come.