So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. 2 Corinthians 4:18 (NLT)

Many years ago I used an illustration while sharing the morning message in my home church. I stretched a piece of plain masking tape from the front of the church to the back of the church using a few chairs in the aisle to prop up the 75 feet or so of tape. I then spread out some pens on the floor and asked everyone to get up from their chairs, make a small dot on the tape with a pen, and write their name next to it.

I asked everyone that morning to imagine that the tape was a time line that continued on through the floor at the front of the stage as far as our eyes could see and out the back of the room to as far as our eyes could see. The tape was eternity, and our little dot on that time line was the 70, 80, or even 100 years that we will spend on this earth. The question I asked that morning was very simple: Are you living for the dot? Or, are you living for the line?

It is so easy to get wrapped up in momentary desires, circumstances, situations, troubles, and issues. But, those things are typically just insignificant blips on the radar when you consider them in light of eternity. We all need a little perspective adjustment from time to time, allowing our heart and mind to consider our immediate troubles in light of God’s Grand Scheme.

Today I’m reminding myself that my immediate troubles are a minute speck on a fleck of ink on a small dot on the masking tape timeline of eternity.

Related articles

• When Weakness Is Strength – 2 Corinthians 11:30 (stevesbiblemeditations.com)
• On a quest for direction (quintessentialmagazine.ca)
• Reflection Friday: A Fixed Gaze (tanekidacres.wordpress.com)
• Keeping it All in Perspective (tomvanderwell.wordpress.com)