Mon., Jan. 14, 2019

1 Peter 2:4 – Now you are coming to him as to a living stone. Even though this stone was rejected by humans, from God’s perspective it is chosen, valuable.

Recently, our grandkids were at our house for the day. Granddaughter Ellie shared with me that she is signed up for photography in 4-H but only has a polaroid camera. We spent time looking at my “nice” camera, an entry model SLR Sony. After I showed her how to properly hold it, carry it and take a basic picture, she was off and taking pictures.

Soon, her older brother Waylan wanted to also takes pictures. After he went through the same basic learning steps, he also was snapping away.

After they were gone, I put the memory card from the camera in my laptop to see the pictures they took. The first one that popped up was this one.

I knew that I was in for a treat.

As I scrolled through the photos, one word kept coming into my mind: perspective. Their little brains just look at things from a slightly different perspective than my aged brain does.

Things are just a little different from their vantage point of life, experience and stage of life.

What they see is different from what I see.

How they frame their lives as a child born in the 21^st century with significantly different technology sources and experiences is vastly different from how I grew up.

Yes, some of the photos were blurry. Mind you, this was their first time using an SLR camera. (I think this was little brother Dylan’s attempt to take a picture. I should have realized this when he asked, “Why is it always blurry?)

What an interesting lesson for me.

You see, we all see the world from a slightly, or maybe not so slightly, different point of view. It’s easy to think that our position is “right.” Or we become frustrated when someone has a completely different launching point than we do. We loose patience when someone makes the same mistake over and over, unless that person is ourselves.

In a world that has cultured a significant “me” mentality, we’ve forgotten that others have points of view as well. Others have different vantage points than we do. Just because another’s perspective is skewed from our position, their perspective may not always be wrong and our position always right. They are just different.

Do we ever contemplate what God’s perspective our world might be today? Does God laugh or cry when God sees the ridiculous, silly and potentially offensive things that we do?

It can be very easy for us to assume God’s perspective and try to articulate it to anyone who will hear. Maybe we’re right. And maybe, we’re way off base from what God would say.

I know this post began with just some pictures that our grandkids took over the weekend. But maybe in these simple photos, there is a lesson for us. Opportunity for us to ponder. Reasons to ruminate.

Perspective. There’s a lot to discover here. If we only stop and think about some one else’s perspective than our own.

For different perspectives around me, I am grateful.

Almighty God – thank you for the simplest shift of perspective when I see through the lenses of a little person. May we be just a bit more tolerant of someone else’s perspective today. Help me see that my perspective may not be the only “right” perspective. And Holy God, may I not be completely frustrated when someone else’s perspective challenges me. Amen.

Blessings –

Dianne

All pictures taken by our grankids. No cropping or editting. Just their perspective.

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