"I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head." Job 42:3 (MSG)

I loved the house in which I grew up on Madison Ave. in Des Moines. To my childish perceptions, it was a mansion. My private bedroom upstairs was huge (of course, my brothers had the really cool room with drawers that were built into the wall). We had a shower! We had a laundry shoot, a fake fire place with a light that made plastic logs look like they were on fire, and a play room with foosball and ping pong!

It's interesting to look back at your childhood from middle-age. There was so much about my world that was far beyond me. The "real world" was way too big for this little midwest boy's perceptions. A few weeks ago when Wendy and I were on vacation in the Ozarks, the private bathroom attached to our room had a shower with three shower heads and two little water jets. You had water shooting at you from all sides. As I showered in luxury that week, I thought of my parents and four kids growing up in a house with one bathroom, and that shower outlined with painted cinder block, and a jerry-rigged shower curtain next to the washing machine in the basement. In my wildest dreams I wouldn't have imagined a double-wide, multi-headed shower in my own private bathroom next to my bedroom.

It's a good lesson, really. When I was a child, my perspective was so small in comparison to the larger world. Now, as an adult I must, like Job, remember that my perspective is still painfully inadequate to grasp all that God sees, perceives, plans, knows and understands.