Bird's Eye View

As I write, this is the view out my window. I'm on a flight back to Dallas, crossing the Rocky Mountains.  I never cease to be amazed at what I can see from up here. I just spent two weeks working on the West Coast, primarily Washington State. I love driving through the mountains and seeing nature in a close up way, it's so refreshing and beautiful to actually be there, breathing the mountain air and feeling the cool of the forest. However, what I love just as much as the coast is the flight to/from Washington. For about 4 hours, you get a view of earth, mountains, plains, valleys, deserts, farm land, lakes, rivers, interstate highways and sky that would have boggled the mind of Benjamin Franklin.

Often when I take trips like this, I come home and my wife asks "What 'Revelation' did you have this time?". Now, she doesn't mean some miraculous communication from the spiritual realm, she means what perspective did I get, while I was away?  You see, when I'm 'away from the fray', the chaotic madness that is a home with children, school, jobs, ball games, bible studies, homework, doctor visits and yards to mow, I am able to see my life like the view from an airplane.  I can examine it from a distance. I can get the big picture. I can see the forest and not just the trees.

Do you ever make/take time to get a birds eye view of your life?  Oh I know, you've got homework,  Fortnite/PUBG/Minecraft, Friends, maybe a job and a never ending chore list, but it's really helpful to just step away from all the hubub of daily life occasionally, especially if you use that time for quiet reflection.  If you actually look through the window of your solitude into your hectic life and think about it.  Think deeply about it.  Look at where you are and where you want to be.  If you're like me, you may notice at times that the road you spend most of your time on doesn't go where you want to end up.  If that's the case it's time for 're-routing'. [That's the type of revelation my wife is referring to.]  As a wise man once said "When you choose the path, you choose the destination."


The beginning of the school year is a good time to consider what path you've been on and if it goes where you want to end up.  For that reason, among others, one of your weekly assignments in your Bible Classes at GCA is to have a regular time of study, prayer and journaling.  The purpose is not to make you 'put in your time' or to make you 'show your work', or even to give me something to put in the grade book.  The goal is for you to step away from your busyness and connect with God as you examine and review your life, your choices, your behavior and compare it to what God tells you he wants.  Are you a godly man/woman, or are you primarily living selfishly?  Do you spend your days with your mind centered on what you want, or what God wants? [or is your mind centered at all?]  Are the tasks you do each day just stuff you gotta do to get through the day, or are they the way you are moving yourself and your life to the destination you want?  The great value in this is being honest with yourself, God already knows.