The Big Picture

When I was young I would go over to my childhood best friends house pretty often. When I did they almost always had a puzzle laid across the kitchen table. And every now and then I would help by adding a piece here and there, but without seeing the picture on the box it was hard to see the end result of the puzzle. Sure there may be a piece here and there that would lead me to different assumptions about what the picture would look like, but I was unable to know for sure until I could see the puzzle in it’s entirety.

As Humans we have a limited understanding so It’s hard for us to see the bigger picture without assistance. And where is our assistance supposed to come from? well i would suggest the one who created the “puzzle” in the first place.

People today have a tendency of trying to figure out the meaning of life on their own, and figuring out the beginning and end of the universe. purely on their thoughts and theories. but we have a limited perspective which means we can never fully understand these things.

Gods Plan

We have Limited Perspective

James 4:13–15 ESV

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”

Does anyone here know what a Demodex is? It’s a microscopic bug that lives on our eyelashes, they’re completely harmless and feed on excess oils, I’m not telling you this to freak you out or anything but rather to get you to think about perspective. Your eyelashes are their whole world, and they aren’t able to survive on anything other than your eyelashes. So their perception is that which they can understand in the scenario they have been placed.

In the same way we can only comprehend so much about God and his plans. Can anyone here tell me where they are going to be in 5 years, how about next year, how about next month, how about tomorrow? We can create our own plans but that doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

Small Fish in a Big Sea

And have you ever thought about quite how small we are in comparison to the universe? There is an entire universe out there most of which we still can’t see with our most powerful telescopes. and when you look at all of time we only take up around 120 years of it if God allows us to.

Do you feel small yet? You could not possibly know what God’s grand plan is on our own when we have such a limited perspective. But thank God that he is a God that is unlimited. He isn’t held to time, he isn’t held to a place. God knows and even created the grand plan, and as we read in Jeremiah 29:11

Jeremiah 29:11 ESV

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

God Has Unlimited Perspective

God cares about us, God loves us. He has plans for us. Now let me ask you, who’s plans would you rather rely on? God’s all-knowing plan that’s not bound by place or time, or your plan which could change in an instant?

Now we know that God does have a good plan for us. In fact lets take a second to appreciate how much our God cares for us and thinks about us. He thinks about us more than anyone else in the universe ever could. Let’s read Psalm 139:17-18

Psalm 139:17–18 (ESV)

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake, and I am still with you.

Now we can estimate that there is about seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains of sand in the world. and let’s assume that the average person lives around 100 years that would mean that God thinks about us 2.3 billion times per second at the minimum. It’s impossible for us to even have that many thoughts in a lifetime.

But God’s plan is perfect and he has the ultimate perspective, and you can’t tell me that he wasn’t thinking about you when creating the grand plan. So yes you can rely on your plans which may or may not take place, or you can trust God, who is thinking about you every second of your life, and live your life one day at a time trusting in his plan for you and trusting that his plan for the universe far exceeds what we can imagine.

Don’t Worry About it

Ecclesiastes 3:9–15 (ESV)

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

You are not in a place to worry about what God has planned, it’s not like you looking over something that I plan and suggest changes, which would be valid because we share perception and understanding. But God has ultimate understanding so we dare not challenge the plan he has laid out due to His understanding.

Let me ask you, do you find yourself worrying about the future often? or ever? I think we all have the tendency to do it, whether it’s about money or relationships or the state that the world is in. Isn’t that a big one, we don’t know what kind of world we are going to be living in in the next couple of years, everything seems to be changing so fast. We worry about the uncertainties.

You know there is a story about Death and he was walking toward a city, and a man stopped Death and asked, “What are you going to do?” Death said, “I’m going to kill ten thousand people.” The man said, “That’s horrible!” Death said, “That’s the way it is; that’s what I do.”

As the day passed, the man warned everyone he could of Death’s plan. At the end of the day he again met Death. He said, “You said you were going to kill ten thousand people, and yet seventy thousand died.” Death explained, “I killed only ten thousand. Worry and fear killed the others.”1502

The author of Ecclesiastes had the right idea, we should just be joyful in all things and do good for as long as we live because that’s all we can do. We could spend our entire life thinking about the future, wondering exactly how God’s plan is going to play out, but it’s not going to benefit us in the slightest.

Small Picture

we all get in the tendency of focusing on the small picture.

A few years ago my sister and I went to Alaska, and it was gorgeous. Has anyone here ever been to Alaska? Everything seems so great there, the mountains are huge and gorgeous, the wildlife is amazing, the hiking trails are unbelievable. But that’s something that you don’t fully experience unless you’re there. Let’s say someone on this side of the room get’s a picture of a small city in Alaska in the summer time, you will probably think, “Wow that’s so great we should go on a trip there” but someone over here get’s a picture of a kodiak bear in in the fall, when there feet of snow and it’s mostly dark out all the time. you will probably be less enthusiastic about going. Now both of these pictures are realities of Alaska, but because you only have a small picture you can have completely different views of the big picture.

Now we all have small picture views every once in a while, maybe it’s while you’re driving, and you have a fit of rage because you got cut off, and you’re focused on the fact that you got cut off rather than the emergency that the other driver may be in. Or we get so caught up in drinking that we don’t realize how it’s affecting the people around us. Or maybe you’re thinking about how awful your job is rather than the people that you’re helping. Or you are too focused on the loss of a family member that you’re struggling to pay attention to the family you still have with you.

So we have this little picture of life that leads to our limited perspective. And people always wan to seek more so they get more pictures of different things they will put together different sections of the puzzle and some will fit and some wont. But us, those of us who are here today that desire the knowledge and wisdom that can only be given by God, we realize that our little picture isn’t enough. we realize that if we want to get a greater perspective we must totally rely on God.

The Big Picture

Now we serve a Glorious God who reveals to us the bigger picture, not in its entirety because we couldn’t possibly grasp it, do you think you could take the time to understand the 2.3 billion thoughts that God has for every single person on Earth every second? Of course we cant, but he has presented his grand plan to us in a way that we might understand his mystery. The bible presents the beginning of time all the way to the revelation of John foretelling the last days. And as we take the time to read through it we can get an idea of the bigger picture.

Right we begin to understand how God created the universe, we begin to understand the roles that we play, we begin to understand the necessary steps it took for Israel to rise and fall and require a savior. We begin to understand how necessary Christ is and how amazing it is that he didn’t just die for Israel but for all of those who would believe.

We start to gain this big picture mind set, where we aren’t limited to our understanding, we don’t try to fit everything that we perceive into our understanding. Right an unbeliever hears of the trinity and that there is an almighty God who created everything and they assume that that’s impossible because it doesn’t fit their small picture. but we, when faced with the same fact, recognize that it is a very real mystery that we can’t understand unless God reveals it to us.

Conclusion

It’s not always easy to look beyond our small picture mindset to see that there is a much larger picture, but as we grow closer to Christ he opens the our minds to the mystery of the Gospel. Take the time to think about the small picture in your life, figure out the thing that takes up your thoughts and prevents you from seeing God’s truth.

When I was in Middle School I remember I would get so focussed on my grades that when I wasn’t doing well in school I felt that the people around me stopped caring about me. Because I allowed one small thing change my perspective of everything. But our Glorious God who loves us and thinks of us constantly, has a plan for us. a plan of welfare to give us a future and hope. I ask you let go of your little pictures and turn to God and allow him to reveal the big picture. I promise you won’t miss the old picture.

and today if you want to let go of your small picture and accept the wisdom, knowledge, and love that God offers then do it. You don’t need to come up here if you don’t want, but recognize that you can’t do it on your own and ask God to reveal his great picture to you. and that’s not as simple as you having a dream which reveals it to you or something like that. Take the time during your day each week and read your bible. Allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you and focus on God’s desires rather than your own.

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