Opus 2025-341: The Big Picture

I just returned from a four day trip to stay with friends in Reno.  After four days of getting up with the dawn, 5:30 Reno time, I find myself having to readjust to being in Texas.  I enjoyed the trip.  I would do it again.  Hopefully I will do it again.  I say that in the face of a trip was immersed in constant conflict.  Every leg of the flight had some major issue about getting where we wanted to go.  That ranged from having to change planes after everybody was on because of mechanical difficulties to having to go all the way across the Las Vegas airport and getting to my connection flight just in time to get on.  It was such a short time that my baggage was not able to be transferred and I had to wait for it to be delivered to my home.  It didn’t get lost.  It just didn’t get on the plane because the plane took off before it got there.  It was an interesting trip, but I found myself more and more relaxed with every seeming obstacle to success.

I’ve come to accept the idea that I need to look at everything that I face in the context of the big picture.  In church terms that would be saying keep in mind Providence.  In my every day lingo, it is looking at what I’m facing as compared to eternity, to whatever number of years, I have left alive, to what real difference will it make tomorrow.

I have always been somewhat laid-back and non-aggressive.  That’s part of my personality.  It was also only on the surface.  Underneath there was always a building tension when things would get in my face or go sideways.  I think I’m finally learning to realize it’s no big deal.  I’m starting more and more to look at life as an adventure in these last years that I have.  There are things that I may never get done.  OK, so what?  There are things that I will get done.  Praise God.  I walked and talked about how we want God‘s will.  Part of that is relaxing when things don’t go the way we want them to go or according to our plan.  Our job is to be obedient.  Not successful.  Oh, success is a good thing.  I would like to see more of it.  But I will not be measured in eternity on how good my lawn looks or whether I was able to figure out how to unclog the sewer.  The big picture is, if you excuse the expression, bigger than that.  I need to grow to fit the picture not expect the picture to shrink to my level.

homo unius libri