Lift My Perspective to See As You See

The heatwave we're going through at the moment in the U.K. has got me remembering being in Europe.

Lisbon and Barcelona are my two favorite places in the world. I love everything about getting on a plane to go to them, but the part I love most happens before I ever land.

If you've visited England in the winter, you'll have experienced the typical morning. Gray, cold, drizzling, the sky one low sheet of cloud pressed flat over everything. But, I'm heading south to some sun.

So there I am, waiting for the plane in the wet, boarding in the gloom, and the world outside the little window is the color of dishwater. From the ground, that gray is the whole sky. It is everything you can see.

Then the engines push, the plane climbs, and it shudders up into the cloud until the window goes blank and white. A few seconds later, we've broken through.

Suddenly it is blinding, glorious sunshine, blue stretching further than you can take in, the cloud now a soft white floor beneath us.

And every time, the same thing astonishes me: the sun was there the whole time. It never left.

While I stood shivering on the tarmac, certain the day was gray and grim, the sun was blazing away a few thousand feet up, shining the whole time, regardless of the weather on the ground.

I think that's the difference between how we see and how God sees. When we're standing in the gray, it feels like the whole world must be the same.

Whatever trial we're going through is so heavy and presses down on us, cold with no color, and if you didn't know what's above the clouds, you'd be convinced it's all there is.

But when we're in those situations, we're not seeing what God sees. We are reading the whole day off one low sheet of cloud, and He is not. He takes in the same gray morning and sees it for what it actually is, a thin layer with a top, and a top means there is something on the other side of it.

I love this verse from Isaiah that says, "His ways are higher."

Not slightly higher but as high as the heavens are above the earth. He is not squinting at our circumstances from the same trapped angle we are, hoping it works out. He sees the whole sky, and He sees exactly what the cloud is hiding from us.

And we do not even have to get on a plane. We could never climb up to God's view on our own. Instead, He comes down to ours. Jesus stepped into the gray with us, into the cold and the wet, not to leave us there but to lift our eyes and show us what He sees.

So today, with whatever trial or situation you're facing, remember that the gray pressing down on you is not the whole sky. It only feels that way from the ground.

Ask God to lift your eyes above it. Not to pretend the weather isn't real, but to remind you it has a top, and above it is sunlight you cannot feel yet.

And He is not watching from the warmth a few thousand feet up. He is down in the cloud with you, and He already sees what is on the other side.

The sun was there the whole time. It never left. And neither has He.