Hi there! Remember me?

It has been WAY too long since I have shown my face here in the friendly confines of WordPress land. So, I want to begin by trying to explain my non-writing sins.

You see, Joan and I have been traveling. A while back we decided we would pack the dogs up in our trusty Priusmobile and hit the road. We drove from our home in Fort Collins, Colorado to a cute little Air BnB just outside of Portland, Oregon. We chose this destination because I have a brother and sister-in-law and nieces in Portland and other siblings scattered all around the beautiful Pacific Northwest. We plan to spend the month of July here, taking in the lush, green beauty of this month that the 11 other months of non-stop rain paves the way for.

In planning this trip, we decided to adopt the S&S approach (Slow and Scenic) and made it here in a leisurely 3.5 days. Along the way I decided I much prefer the S&S style to my customary “pedal-to-the-metal, get-there-as-fast-as humanly-and-legally-possible” method. 

It is FUN! It is RELAXING! It lets you (LITERALLY!) stop and smell the roses whenever you want to! As one quick example, did you know that one of the two waterfalls that the city of Twin Falls, Idaho is named after, Shoshone Falls, is absolutely SPECTACULAR and is known as the “Niagara Falls of the West?” 

Mr. Breakneck “Get There as Fast as Humanly Possible” could never have passed along that juicy travel tidbit!

On this trip we were guided – naturally – by our Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system. Also by the printouts of the route Joan made in case we lost connectivity in the middle of Nowhere, Utah. 

This navigation system reminded me of the way we used to travel when I was young. Our family used a combination of those big, inscrutably folded paper maps from the neighborhood gas station with the occasional Trip-Tiks^™ from AAA thrown in for variety. 

And since I was the oldest of the five siblings, I was usually the one tasked with sitting there next to dad with that big, ol’ honking map in front of me, trying to diligently warn him of the next turn. The trick was to ALWAYS keep the map turned in the direction we were traveling so you wouldn’t say, “Turn right pretty soon,” instead of, “Turn left in a bit.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love my GPS system. I am still absolutely flabbergasted by the black magic that allows a satellite flying 10,000 miles above me to assume the soothing voice of a woman and tell me to turn “… slight right in 800 feet.”

But you know what? As we drove along this week, I realized there is something about those clunky, 50-foot wide, four-color road maps I really miss. 

I think what I miss the most about them is having the ability to see the Big Picture and the immediate, intimate detail of my journey at the same time. The paper map lets you look at this little piece of I-84 you are on right now, but it also lets you step back and see all the twists and turns and state borders that lie far up ahead. For all its precision and voodoo magic, the GPS is focused almost entirely on what is happening RIGHT HERE… RIGHT NOW. 

[METAPHOR ALERT! METAPHOR ALERT!] 

And if you’ve been on this planet a while, you have learned that living life well takes BOTH viewpoints, the micro as well as the macro. You have no doubt also learned that life can be a frustrating dance between those two poles, sometimes living with your nose too close to the grindstone while at other times wandering around with your head too far up in the clouds. How is it humanly possible to make a decision comparing the merits of a short-term payoff with the virtues of a longer-term good?

Fortunately, the Bible reminds us that God is the only one who has mastered the simultaneous use of the MACROscope and MICROscope. It tells us, “… with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” (2 Peter 3:8, NRSVU). 

And so, the conclusion should be as clear as the blue lines on a AAA highway map; if you want to have the remotest shot at seeing the Big and the Little picture clearly, you should use your GPS: that is, your GodlyPerspective System.

Abundant blessings;