It's All About Perspective

We are not born with perspective. It is an acquired trait. It can only be developed with time and experience.

Visual perspective is the eye's ability to analyze the distance and position of objects to one another based on acquired knowledge about the size and dimension of the objects themselves. We learn the relationship between far, near, and everything in between. This is why it takes time to develop and why babies back up to steps, trip over thresholds, but reach for the moon. It is why they are not afraid to be tossed into the air and caught, or jump from high places into an adult's arms. As they age, over a few months and years, and develop perspective, they will move more surely, take steps more quickly, stop reaching for the moon, and they will become afraid! As adults they will be afraid of things they cannot see and their mind will tell them things are unreachable because they are too far away! They will limit themselves to those things which look close, make sense, and look safe.

Mental, emotional, and psychological perspective all work in the same way. Children think they are the center of the universe and teenagers can't see what their parents already know. (They depend totally on "lateral vision", which values the opinion of peers over anybody else). And even as adults, we often misjudge God, ourselves, and others because of faulty perspective. We see tiny mountains and huge anthills! We really mess things up when we start acting on false perspective, dismissing important things and devoting entirely too much attention to anthills.

During my second week in the hospital, I was taken rather unceremoniously to have x-rays made of my abdominal surgical site. I suppose to verify that the plumbing was working. I could have told them it wasn't. I was loaded into a wheelchair, wrapped in warm blankets and pushed by an orderly to the elevator which emptied me out into the main lobby of the hospital. I looked like Mahatma Gandhi with an attitude!
I was parked in the main hallway by a door marked "Imaging" and told that someone would be out shortly to take me into the room. So there I was, left alone in that hallway with people walking in both directions in front of me and staring at me like I was either a strange growth on the floor or a beggar who took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in their hallway! All I needed was a tin cup!

I pulled the blanket over my head and tried to cover as much of my face as possible. I tried to disappear.I sat in that hallway for what seemed like an eternity and grew angrier by the moment. "What a stupid place to put the X-Ray unit!" "Why not just let me sit out in the driveway?!", I groused.
Why was I not surprised that of all times and places for somebody to actually recognize me, they did there! Somebody from a church where I had ministered just happened to walk by and recognized me! They stopped, did a double take, and tried to strike up a conversation with me, oblivious to what I had just gone through, how I was feeling, and what I was facing. Now, I was already annoyed that I had to be in that busy hallway on such a 'bad hair day' but then, to add to my indignation, my sick, emaciated, shrouded body was still recognizable to someone! So much for self image! Was there a sign posted somewhere? Caution: Sam Frank ahead- Merge Left<" I bluntly told the person I'm in no mood to talk and need to sit quietly. Besides, I am prone to sudden, violent spasms of vomiting! You may want to move, like, into the next corridor! I wanted to say it, but didn't. (Lady, if you are reading this, I'm sorry!)

It was time for my out-of-perspective perspective to get readjusted!

That's when the wagons started arriving. Little red ones, pulled by moms, dads, brothers and sisters. They each carried a small child wrapped in a blanket, hairless, sallow skin with blue veins, sunken eyes with dark circles gazing at a nothing in particular but looking like little soldiers transported into a war zone. The look on the faces of the parents said it all. I looked for a glimmer of hope and optimism, but it was brutally absent. Most of them knew that their time with that child had become their most precious possession, and even a wagon ride to chemotherapy was made as special as it could be and filled with all the love and comfort humanly possible. Most of them probably had mere weeks. Some would leave without their child.

In anger and shame at my self, I sat up a little straighter, dropped the blanket from my head and, fighting back tears, I began to smile at every child as they approached. I tried to catch the eye of each parent and say a kind word.

I am doing fine! I have no problems! I have a chance! I heard myself saying these things aloud to anybody and everybody! I would spend the next hour stretched out on a cold, hard x-ray table making jokes about my guts, and being "digestively challenged"!

"Doc, will I be able to play the cello when I get out?"

"I believe you will, sir."

"Amazing! I can't play any instrument now!"

They're probably still talking about that one!

As we enter into 2010, our perspective may suffer the ravages of economic, physical, domestic, or emotional crisis'. The path ahead may seem long when you are so weary, short when you need hope, rough and rutted when you hurt beyond endurance. One thing is certain. For 33 years, the God of your salvation lived in this world, in an age that was particularly brutal, enslaving, prejudiced, segregated, impoverished, hungry, sick, and ignorant. Embodied in flesh, the un-blinking eye of God experienced all of it and today, at this very moment, will guide you and I through our lives with un-erring direction by His Eternal Perspective! Let's trust Him!