“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Psalm 27:13

“It’s life, that’s all, kiddo.” My dad says.

My father and I are walking the muddy edge of the Mohican River, both of us doing a pretty bad job of avoiding the puddles, I remember. I lift my camera and notice that the landscape matches the mental picture I’m taking: Frazzled mom in muddy shoes, broken branches, brackish water, soggy leaves. I’ll have to crop most of these pictures, I think, as I watch another styrofoam cup float by.

My father had used these viewpoints to calm me down before. “It’s being a teenager.” He would explain. “It’s school.” Then later, “It’s being an adult. It’s college.” And later still, “It’s being newly married, It’s work. It’s being a parent…” and I liked that everything had its place and reason for being what it was. 

But life isn’t really like that… all croppable, I mean. Spell-check says croppable isn’t really a word, but you are wrong spell-check. Because life, man! 

Life isn’t always cut and captured like the cutest polaroid’s I’ve taken of my family, sticking right now with magnets to the front of my fridge. 

Life is Messy

Sometimes, and through most struggles, we try and make sense of what we see. We just use too small of a lens to do it. Is that a shape of something new? But it’s blurry, fuzzy, far-off. It looks like a kitten, sort of. It’s probably a storm. Most likely a lightning strike—we are sure of it.

And I think what my dad was saying, is that life can become this entity of what we try to figure out through the tiniest pigments of our tiniest eyes in the widest sky and the greatest galaxy. We switch to our wide-angle. Still, we capture simple molecules, small glimpses of all God’s goodness is doing. Somedays, it seems, we have to squint-trust to know He’s at work. He is good. That he cares. 

It’s so easy, I think, to forget the bigger picture. To overthink the stressful circumstance you’ve stared a hole through since 3am. Believe me, I know this quest to capture what’s waiting ahead. I know what it’s like to miss the beauty that surrounds me (even today), because I can’t take my eye off the styrofoam cup floating by!

It’s been a gift to remind myself, “It’s life, that’s all.” Not in the way that I see today’s struggles and throw my hands in the air with despair (crazy hands here). But by looking at today without filters, without makeup, sometimes even without croppable corners (settle down spell-check), and still, be able to acknowledge the beauty in it. 

Adjust your lens

What if instead of looking through your circumstance—and turning your camera until it catches the brighter light—what if instead, with a deep sigh of delight, you see life the way it truly is? Lived through God’s mercy and grace and goodness. Faith is sometimes a matter of trusting God’s greater picture, the harder shot, when all we really want is a cropped snapshot for our fridge.

I see things so much clearer, though, when I use the lens of a fixed faith: 

“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Psalm 27:13

The word goodness in this verse means to be just, right. And David believed God’s goodness would make it possible for him to outlive his troubles. Not only would he have continual mercy and grace and goodness from God, but also, he would “see” or “enjoy” a deliverance in his life here on earth, “…in the land of the living.” This verse is like David urging us in confidence, Use your zoom lens today. Step back. Look up. Click, click, click.

Rather than envisioning his circumstance through the lens and landscape of defeat, David’s trust is based on what he knows of God. “This is faith, that’s all.” I can hear my dad say. 

Like David, we can watch and see God’s GOODNESS coming, and experience it in the snapshot of our day. The snapshot, we will most definitely, probably, (unlike spell-check), consider croppable and then put directly onto our fridge. CLICK.  

Father, prayer is how we trust. It is also the lens through how we can see hope in our circumstance, even when we can’t really see it. But we believe, Jesus, help our unbelief as we hope in You. May we look ahead to Your truth and Your plan, and capture Your goodness in the our lens. Amen. 

What do you know about God? Think about the assurance you have that His picture-perfect goodness will capture this day in a holy light. 

Meet Beth…