Did I ever mention that I have a granddaughter named Madison? I know, I know –only 10,000 times! Madison is almost nine years old and brings such joy and laughter to us. Michael, our son, was in the Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin, so Madison spent the first three years of her life in Madison, WI.

While in Wisconsin, Michael’s family lived in a small two-bedroom apartment with one tiny bathroom. When Madison would visit us, she would run around my house, or she would follow me from room to room. One day she looked at me and said, “You have a big house!” Actually, Gaylon and I don’t have a big house at all. Madison’s comment was based on her perspective of what she was experiencing in her life at that time.

Let’s fast forward to Madison’s third birthday which she spent with us in Alabama. They were actually moving to Baton Rouge, LA, where Michael took a position as an assistant professor at LSU. We went with them to Baton Rouge to  move into their brand new home. It was a nice, two-story home with two and one-half baths. It was so much fun to watch Madison run around in the large empty rooms! After we finished the move, Gaylon and I headed back to Alabama.

Several months later, Madison was visiting us again and following me around my house. She said, “Granny, your house is kind of small.” She made me laugh out loud. She was again basing the size of my house on her perspective of how she was experiencing life at the time.

PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING! Have you ever felt as if life was like an oven turned up to 500 degrees and you were inside? In times of great testing, it may seem as if God has gone on vacation without leaving a telephone number where you can reach Him. The thing I have to guard against is judging everything by what I am experiencing at the moment. It seems as though I am either basking in the sweetness of God’s grace or sweating on the hot seat of challenging circumstances. Life seems to bounce between the two. How about for you?

We have a tendency to see things from an earthly perspective, while God sees things from a heavenly perspective.  Alan Redpath stated, “There is nothing—no circumstance, no trouble, no testing—that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose, which I may not understand  at the moment.”

God is always at work in our lives – ALWAYS. We see the beginning, while He sees the beginning and the end. He sees the completed puzzle, whereas we see a stack of puzzle pieces lying all over the place, not knowing where each piece is supposed to fit. Our lives at times seem like the underside of a tapestry.There are lots of threads that have no rhyme or reason, colors running together, chaos.  When the tapestry is turned over one can see that every thread had a purpose in completing the picture. PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING!

Isaiah 55:8 – “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,nor are your ways My ways,” says 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.”