…Little Picture

S:

Ephesians 3:20

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

(Message)

O:

Paul is here trying to encourage the church at Ephesus to realize and understand that in spite of may be currently in our short view, it is the bigger picture that we always have to keep in mind.

A:

We all know this, acknowledge this, but in reality, too often we only pay lip service to this idea. I probably am not in a very good mindset to be writing this this morning. We have a lot of stress in our lives at this present time, and what’s worse, it is a recurring stress that has happened over and over and over in our lives. Most of it is financial, which causes all sorts of personal questions and self-evaluation on my part. Am I not ambitious enough? Am I not dedicated enough? Why can I never be satisfied with the status quo? Why am I so discontent regardless of where I find myself? Why does it take me so long to learn spiritual lessons when I did so well in school, graduate degrees and all?  And then I read a verse like this and ask, Why does this never work for me?

And how does all of this apply to marriage? Well, here is the magnificent thing that God seems to use, at least in our marriage. When I get this funky and depressed over our situation, invariably, my wife is “up” and supporting me and our situation, telling me that we are Ok, God is not going to leave us high and dry. It is really the true embodiment of two are better than one. Also, the reverse is true, when she is in a depressed mood, I am the currently optimistic one, encouraging her that we are going to get through this. I can’t tell you how much I thank God, even though sometimes I think we have a very strained relationship, that neither my wife nor I threw in the towel over our marriage when we were really frustrated with each other.

I started out by observing the contrast between short view and long view or immediate picture and big picture. It is not unlike the newer televisions that have the option of what they call “picture-in-picture”, you know, where there is a little picture somewhere on the screen of a different channel. Too often we allow our present and current circumstances to occupy the full picture screen and become so immersed in it, that we forget about what is happening in the little picture. We need to remind ourselves that we need to reverse the pictures, make the little picture our current circumstances and make the big picture what God is really doing in our lives in the long term.

P: Lord, help me to keep you in the big picture and my circumstances in the little picture. Amen.