Perspective

God sees circumstances differently than I do. What looks like a prison wall to me is a training place to Him. What looks like sure defeat to me looks like an opportunity for Him to be God. When I fall down, I’m likely to want to stay down and mope. When I fail, my tendency is to hide in a room and turn my phone off.

God’s purposes for me are so often misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and misjudged. Yet in his love and grace He doesn’t give up on me. This illustration is a great reminder to keep perspective when all seems lost. I found it in a book I was reading and used it in teaching last night’s Bible Study lesson. A couple of people asked me for it, so I thought the readers of this blog might enjoy it too and find it encouraging.

“Thomas Carlyle wrote The History of the French Revolution” by hand before computers or even typewriters existed. After three years of writing and lengthy research, he had a fifteen-hundred-page manuscript. He gave his finished work to John Stuart Mills to edit and proofread. Mills put the manuscript in a basket so he could work on it in the evenings by firelight. While he was on a trip, his maid saw the stack of paper and thought it was there to help start the fire. The entire manuscript was destroyed by the time John Stuart Mills returned.

When Thomas Carlyle found out about this, he went into a deep depression. He drew the blinds on his house and refused to eat. After a couple of weeks, he opened one of the blinds. Across the street he saw a man working on a brick wall that had broken down in front of an old church. For three weeks, eight hours a day, Carlyle watched the man rebuild that wall, one brick at a time. When the wall was rebuilt, it looked as good as new.

“If he can rebuild that wall brick by brick”, Carlyle said, “I can rebuild my manuscript page by page.” He began to write, and within two years he finished it. Today Thomas Carlyle’s The history of the French Revolution is a classic of historical literature.”

Don’t give up. Perhaps today all you need to do is to open the shades to your window and look out. The divine perspective looks at your life from beginning to end. What you’ve already concluded as hopeless, God is waiting to redeem. What we’ve deemed as useless, He will use for our good. No situation is too difficult for Him to fix. No person so lost he cannot be saved.

He is good, even in the middle of your greatest disasters.

He is in control, even when all seems lost and confusing.

He is God, able to save to the uttermost those who cry out to Him.

He is your redeemer, though it seems to be one little brick at a time.

He is here, near you today, no matter what you’re going through.

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