As I was answering a heartfelt e-mail last night, I had a sudden thought.
What if we could see our lives from the air? What if, instead of a mass of incomprehensible twists and turns and detours, we could take off in our spiritual Piper Cub, and look down on the pattern from above?
What would we think of the pattern?
Would we be able to see where we took the wrong fork in the road, and know which way to turn around once we landed? Would we see the bright fields of flowers we've left in our wake, even though we never knew we were sowing the seeds?
Is it possible that we would see that that some of the "mistakes" we thought we made actually protected us from something worse? Would we see where other people's paths cross our own, and our path intersects theirs?
What would it be like to see the picture we're creating with our lives?
2 comments:
There is a certain romance in being able to see from a level above, to have the advantage of seeing how we have affected our own path and the paths of others. But that is not easily available to us, and perhaps it should not be. If we seek to improve ourselves through faith, then by very definition we should not be able to "check our scorecard" along the way. Faith requires us to take action without a means of reviewing our results. If we could see that big picture, faith would be replaced with science, and doing the right thing, however we define "right", is replaced with trial and observation.
For myself, I'll be content to live my life from ground level. To make each decision with only the means within my reach and my personal faith of right and wrong. I will make mistakes, and I hope I'll be humble enough to learn from them. I'll also make friends along the way, and perhaps that will be the greatest reward of all.
Good thoughts. I know what you mean about the effort versus the scorecard. And what you said about friends...you're right. Would we need friends if we were blessed/cursed with a way to take care of it alone?
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