While cleaning out my desk, I found this little poem I wrote on a scrap piece of paper some time ago. With the things that have gone on in my life, I have to believe that there is a God, that there is order and purpose for the things we go through. My faith is part of who I am and how I make decisions in the everyday. The direction of my life has not been necessarily straight forward as I wish sometimes it would be. I take the gestaltist view that the whole picture is what matters. I am but a fixed finite speck in a vast infinite whole and so my perspective no matter how hard I try, will always be finite.
The grasses grow and wither,
Over the surface of the earth.
We scurry hither and thither.
And over it all God stands,
All of time resting in his hands,
Watching over everyone in all the lands.
We see but a pin prick of light,
While the Father sees the entire globe so bright.
I am both insignificant and grand
depending on perspective. As an
individual in a big wide world of a population 7 billion plus, I am but an
insignificant grain of sand. I have no
grand title, no great role to play within society at large, no powerful
profession. I’m just a stay at home mom
and quite often when I am out among the throng I feel the “just” part
strongly. I am not the one that they
crowd gravitates to when part of a group.
It doesn’t help that I am an introvert and definitely a thinker. But hey, it’s too bad they didn’t get to know
me. They might discover I have a huge
skill set and knowledge base to share.
And yet to
my children I am grand. They depend on
me in their daily lives and I believe they’re young enough to believe I am
grand yet. In the tender years, I am their hero. We’ll see how they feel in
the teenage years. The drama is already
starting with my daughter. To my son,
because of his health I have been a lifeline.
More than once I have rushed him to the hospital when he was ill and tended
to him to help him get well again. I
love my children. I’ve sacrificed much
for them.
Perhaps
what I do matters, what I do for them as much as what I’ve given up for them. My husband and I are their primary character
examples. We’re raising them as best we
can and who knows what they will go on to do in their lifetimes.
In our daily interactions we make
choices that affect others, no matter how small. What if I’m the one who throws a pebble in
the water and the small ripples of displacement that result combine with the
big waves of the sea to build just high enough to sink a ship? We’ve no idea what results from the choices we
make and how our cumulative actions combine.
In His infinite wisdom, God does.
Perhaps we form a beautiful mosaic of interwoven separate, yet somehow
unintentionally dependant actions result in something good.
We can plan
and act and hope that our actions bear the fruit we desire, but sometimes no
matter how hard we try things just don’t come together. Sometimes wonderful things seem to come out
of the blue. Proverbs 16:9 says, “In his
heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” I can give it my all only to have it all fall
apart because it wasn’t meant to be. God
sees the big picture and I see the world through the small pinhole of my
perspective no matter how much I think things through. I make decisions with the information I have
gathered over my experiences of my lifetime with my finite viewpoint.
I may never
be anyone considered great by the general populous or be a household name, but
in my household I matter. I would rather
be insignificantly grand than grandly insignificant.
No comments:
Post a Comment