While watching landscape pass below me on a 1.5hr plane ride home, I reflected on two things that reminded me of the need for people to see things from a broader perspective.
1. Viewing things in comparison to ourselves doesn’t allow us to see the bigger picture.
The trees, roads, buildings, etc. are much bigger than me by self-comparison, but by looking at it all from a distance, they were so small within the bigger landscape. In the same sense, when we are so focused on measuring circumstances around us in such a small individual scope as ourselves, it reduces our field of vision and allows us to fall into the trap of worry, fear and frustrations about trials in our lives. This stops us from seeing the people around us who are affected by our actions as well as seeing how much more suffering is being felt by others in comparison to our trials. We cannot be content in our circumstances when we look inwardly.
2. When viewing sins only in comparison to the world, we make our sins look smaller than they really are.
On the opposite spectrum, people don’t seem to have a problem comparing their sins to those around them in a broad scope, allowing them to think “I’m not as bad”. It allows us to reduce the severity of sin in our lives because we compare it to every other imperfect person in this world (which is everyone). In doing so, we fail to put our actions, thoughts and feelings under God’s perfect standards, and thus not being able to see just how large the sins in our lives truly are.
In both points, it showed me just how finite our perspective in life really is and how selfish we tend to be with how we view things. Thank you Lord for reminding me of how dependent your children should be on you to guide our hearts and lives so as to walk in your truths and love. May we not conform to the norms of our world but be able to see and act upon things through your timeless and perfect truths. Give us a broader perspective of our circumstances and actions so we may not be tunnel visioned but be always looking to glorify you in our lives.
