Picture.

Whenever I am out west I am fortunate enough to stay in lovely homes (because you and I and Jesus all know that I love lovely homes and Jesus makes it happen, let me tell you).
At this one particular house there is a large picture window. And outside of that picture window is a mountain.
A big mountain.
Like the kind I am terrified to climb.

But one thing about the west that is unlike where I am from is that the clouds sometimes hang REALLY low.
Where I am from, they are big and huge and high in the sky and don’t block my line of vision.
Like this.

 

That is not what they are like out west.
This is what they are like:

 

They shroud.

There is something all cuddly and snuggly about them and they make me want to curl up under a blanket and drink cocoa, regardless of the fact that it is July or August or something and I should not be under a blanket with cocoa.

More typically than not, however, is that they are kind of annoying and I want them to go away.
I don’t want to be bundled up drinking cocoa when it’s not November. Or January. Or Christmas.

The real issue, though, is that I want to see what they are blocking.

I want to see the mountains.

And not just half of the mountains, like this.

 

No.
I want to see all of the mountains, like this.

 

 

But alas. This is sometimes all I can see. And I don’t like it.

 Because it’s not the whole picture.

Then I realized that more often than not this is how I feel about my life.
I don’t want to see base camp, I don’t want to see clouds, I don’t want to see a few trees, a few jagged crags. I want to see all of it. Give me all the details, give me all the adventure, give me all the mystery, I want to know what it looks like and I want to sketch it out in a journal.

Is this resonating with anyone else? This sometimes-it-feels-like-constant annoyance that the only part of your life that you might have figured out doesn’t make sense with the rest of your life?

Like, you know there is a mountain in here somewhere, but you just can’t see it.

You know there is a grand beautiful plan that will make all of this make sense, but you have got absolutely no visual on what in the world this is going to look like; how any of this random, fringe kind of stuff all works together for great good.
You know there is a big picture. It just eludes you.

I was reading a while back, and I think I mentioned it, but I came across this verse in Habakkuk that said “His were the everlasting ways.” (Hab 3:6).

The pondering of this makes me feel small. Makes me feel so NOT everlasting. I had a beginning, I have not been from before the beginning like he has. I am terribly mortal and fragile and as Francis Schaeffer would say “a glorious ruin.” I cannot see the big picture. Goodness sakes I can’t even see it for my own personal life, let alone for YOUR life and how all of this somehow works together.

While thinking all these abstruse thoughts, this picture came into my head and I think it conveys, at least to me, why in the world I feel the way I do about this situation, why I am frustrated that I can’t see the whole picture. Why I can’t see how my life makes any difference; is connected to all the rest of it.

Imagine that this picture is the world. All of its trappings, from all of its times passed and times to come, every human being with all of their stories and heartaches and tragedies and blessings and favor and disobedience and faithfulness. This is how all of that works together.

But….but….this is your life.

This is my life.

 

Wait a second, what?

Where did that come from?

 Right there.

Now you see it, don’t you?

But why couldn’t we see it before?

Because, Wolfies, ours are not the everlasting ways. We don’t have eyes big enough to see all of it. Our lives do not encompass the whole scope of the universe. We don’t get to see the big picture while on this earth, because that’s not our job. We did not design this, we do not hold it all together, we are not the Finisher.

That’s what HE does.

He has his role, we have ours. They are not the same.

Sure, sure, we can mope about this; we can think we are miniscule, small, like maybe our non-everlasting-ways life doesn’t make a difference in anything.

I beg to differ, though. And I think he does, too.

Pieces cannot be removed and still have a complete story.

Our life doesn’t make sense to us because all we see is the green foliage. All we see is the little cave. And we can’t figure out what lies beyond our life.

To use the old analogy, we can’t see the forest, just the trees.

We are not from everlasting to everlasting. Ours are the finite ways. But all of our little finite stories, all of our lives that started sometime yet somehow reach into eternity, they are a part of the bigger story.

Take heart, babies. I promise you that if you are in Christ, your life is indeed a piece of the beautiful final picture.
Even when we can’t see it. Even when we can’t figure out our own little corner of it.