Faith in the Big Picture

This past year has been hard and overwhelming on so many levels.  Adjusting to a new job, starting the adoption process, and my parents' cancer always looming.  Emotionally, through all the daily challenges, I have circulated through excitement, fear, grief, guilt, insecurity, comfort, peace, thankfulness, loss, inadequacy, stress, humbleness, confidence, over-confidence, love, hope, joy...it just keeps going.  I have been so caught up on myself and the daily struggle to choose right, seek God first, and live well in spite of hard times, that I have quite simply forgotten the big picture.  My sweet aunt and sister each sent me a reminder last week that there is so much more going on than just my small world.

First, Lindsay sent me an email newsletter from her pastor, who had partnered with eight other pastors from the Houston area to visit The Jewish Agency in Jerusalem.  This is just a little piece of his excitement for how well their meeting went:

The CEO of The Jewish Agency told another Jewish friend:   "I have no words. I was totally changed.  I was blown away.  No matter what happens this mission was huge.  It is time to partner with these Christians."  Also, after our first meeting, the meeting with Natan Sharansky, they decided to change their whole attitude toward working with Christians. 

God is at work all around the world and my struggles and triumphs, though important to Him as my Creator-Father, are only a small part of His great plan for His world.  He is moving in the World and bringing His Big Picture plan into completion.  

Then my aunt sent me these pictures: 

This is a scale model of Earth and the smaller planets.  I'm just a tiny speck on the earth, and yet my life and my struggles feel so consuming.  Even with a global perspective, realizing that I'm not the only person in whom God is at work, that my problems are relatively small in comparison to what others struggle through, I still visualize Earth in this way...big and important.

The Earth in proper perspective with the rest of our solar system:

Our Sun is tiny compared to other stars in our galaxy (Earth isn't even visible in this scale).

In this scale, the sun is a tiny dot and Antares, the 15th brightest star, is more than 1000 light years away.  

And this is a Hubble telescope picture of countless ENTIRE GALAXIES billions of lightyears away.  

And all of it, ALL OF IT, was made by a Creator God who loves me and cares for my tiny problems.  He is big enough for me and big enough for this world.  He has a plan, not only for my life in all its joy and struggle, but for the whole Earth, in all its joy and struggle.  He is at work in me.  He is at work in all the Earth, in His Big Picture, so big that I can't even imagine it.   

My life, joys, and struggles are only a tiny part of it.  Rather than making me feel small and insignificant, this gives me courage to press on.  I want to be a tiny part of His Big Picture, my story part of His story, my struggles part of His redemption, my joys part of His victory.  He is Big and He wins it all.