Morning Devotional:
I was instantly frustrated when I stepped on the scale. It had been a couple of months since I had been to my doctor’s office and I had been praying to hit another benchmark in my weight loss journey, but the number on the scale wasn’t making the trip. In fact, it had moved nowhere. Not a single ounce had fallen off. I was crushed, and when my physician came into the exam room, I couldn’t hold back the tears.
I have to give my doctor a lot of credit. She knows her stuff and she has definitely seen a lot of patients in my position. She is also a great listener, and she took the time to hear what I was thinking, what I was feeling, and what I thought I was doing wrong. When I was finished, she paused for a moment and then did something that changed my whole outlook.
She made me back up and look at the whole picture.
She pulled up a graph documenting all of the weight I had lost from the first day she saw me through yesterday – a downward sloping line over the course of almost a year documenting steady, healthy weight loss – and as I looked at the graph she said, “Beth, very few people get this far. This is your victory today. Don’t forget about the big picture.”
We only see a very small part of God’s plan sometimes. We may see just a tiny pixel of the picture of a big screen TV image, or fixate on one single brush stroke of a French impressionist masterpiece. We see “only a reflection as in a mirror” the plans of God as it says in 1 Corinthians 12; we only “know it in part” and then one day we will know fully. We may never understand completely the big picture but oh, those times when He gives us the opportunity to try? Those days are wonderful, and His plan is vast!
– Beth
Burning Question:
What is something you feel you should like but just don’t?
Bible Quiz:
Question: Who had a dream about a giant statue struck by a stone?
Answer: Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 2:34-35)
Storytime Zebedee was despondent