What sorrow awaits Nineveh,
    the city of murder and lies!
She is crammed with wealth
    and is never without victims.
Nahum 3:1 (NLT)

We have been at the lake over the long holiday weekend, and I have been thinking big picture thoughts this morning as I write my morning pages. Such is the power of this place. Everyday busyness and the whirr of the daily grind give way to the whisper of water and wind. Perspective broadens from the to-do list on my cluttered desk to the sunrise on the horizon. Thoughts and intentions have room to move and find their being here.

It is sometimes difficult reading the words of the ancient prophets like those in this morning’s chapter. The message from a semitic writer in the middle east from two millenia past seems so distant and remote as read on an iPad in a 21st century modern world. What does it really mean to me?

In the big picture frame of mind this morning I catch a glimpse. Nahum told of the fall of a kingdom which had stood on top of the world. Kingdoms rise and fall. That’s part of the Great Story which gets easily lost in the minutae of my daily grind. But there is a Great Story  being told, and I am in it just as Nahum was in an earlier chapter. If I lose sight of the Great Story then I’ve missed the point entirely, and then it becomes a tragedy.

Sometimes I desperately need the soul elixir offered by the quiet of this place. I need to step back and gain a different, and much larger perspective than the myopic lens of my moment-by-moment, day-to-day realities. Nahum watched kingdoms rise and fall. So have I. We are both part of the Great Story.

Do I know my part?

FYI… I’m taking the rest of the week off to watch the sunrise and listen to the whisper of the wind and water. We’ll take up the chapter-a-day journey next week. In the meantime, don’t forget there’s an index of old posts if you’d like to click on a few. Cheers!