Bigger Picture

Psalm 139:16 (NIV84)  

Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Good morning Zebras,

On the plane to Chicago I was killing time by looking through the free magazine the airlines provided.  I stumbled across a Sudoku and I found it was a good way to pass the time so I bought myself a book of them for the airplane ride home.

If you have never done a Sudoku, it is a repetitive logical puzzle which requires that you fill boxes, rows, and columns with the numbers 1-8. You have to work carefully because each number can only be used once in box, row, or column.

Now I have done Sudokus before, in fact I used to give them to my students for extra credit when I was teaching, so not only have I done them, I’ve taught others how to do them, so I thought I knew what I was doing.  But I was wrong, at least partially.

I knew how to do them, I just wasn’t doing them “right.”  I could do the easy puzzles, but I couldn’t do the harder ones and I finally figured out why. I was looking at the puzzles as individual boxes, rows and columns instead of looking at it as one big interrelated box. 

And isn’t that the way we look at life?  We look at small boxes, rows and columns, our own problems, trials and concerns instead of looking at the “bigger picture.”

This month my herd is pondering on the incomprehensible nature of God.  How God and the things of God are beyond our understanding and yet in His grace He gives us glimpses of who He really is and what He is doing. 

Last week, when I was in Chicago, I was struck that first morning by the fact that God knew, when He enabled D.L. Moody to start Moody Bible Institute that this week would come.  He knew Katherine would apply and be accepted, and that I would be prompted to come to visit her at Founder’s Week.  Then today’s verse came to mind.  So I looked it up and read all of Psalm 139.

It is so humbling to realize that God who created the universe watches over us in such an intimate way that He knows what we are going to say and do before we even do it.  But, He doesn’t just know what we are going to do He knows what everyone is going to do and He has orchestrated our paths and lives to be interconnected and interrelated with one another, not only in the here and now, but in the past and in the future. All for our good and His honor and glory.

And I think that may be the “bigger picture” we need to remember.

Love,

Jill