“the eye is not satisfied with seeing”
Ecclesiastes 1:8
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The kids and I had an interesting experience the other day. My sweetie works in the marketing department of his company, and they are working on advertising for some doorknobs. So he asked if we wanted to come in and be “hand models” for the photos. I guess they’ll be on the company’s website, places like that. So we had to stand in front of a fake door ~ well, the door wasn’t fake, but it wasn’t attached to a house ~ with our hand reaching out for the doorknob.
Something like this:
The photographer had his camera wired to a computer, so as soon as he clicked, the photo appeared on the computer screen. This way, he could adjust it slightly, either to “fix” it, or to get a slightly different shot.
So while one of my kids was standing as the model, I could watch on the screen, and the perspective was interesting. Our bodies were not in the shot as much as in the above picture. It’s more just our hand and maybe part of the arm, so little details made a big difference. The photographer would have us angle our hand slightly, up or down; move our hand closer or farther from the knob; or shift our fingers closer together.
Plus we had to stand in an awkward way so our bodies wouldn’t block the doorknob. If you think about it, when you go to open a door, you are right in front of it. We had to be off to the side, and he sometimes had to tell us to position our elbows or wrists or something to get a better angle.
It’s all about perspective. Anyone looking at the picture will not be seeing the whole thing. They won’t know that we had to contort our bodies to get the hand to look natural, when the body position was not. An arm not positioned correctly will look like the elbow is abnormally large, or there are fingers missing. They won’t be getting the whole picture, so to speak.
I often think about how God’s view of life is so much more accurate than yours and mine. He is outside of space and time, sees all and knows all. We only see a part of the picture.
But this experience made me think about perspective, too. I mean, I know when I’m walking through a difficult situation, it’s the only thing I can think about, but I also wonder if sometimes that’s what He wants. I mean, not that He ever wants to us only think about ourselves ~ He wants that a whole lot less than we do, really.
No, I mean, I wonder if He wants us seeing things out of focus a little. To concentrate on one thing so that we will stop thinking about something else, or so that we’ll get everything we can out of it.
It’s like when an artist or architect uses forced perspective to make something appear nearer or farther, smaller or larger than it actually is. It’s all part of a plan.
It makes me want to think less, somehow. To stop trying to deal with every angle of a situation ~ good or bad ~ and just respond to Him more simply, based on what He is showing me. To trust that what I am seeing is what He wants me to, and that if He’s withholding information, it’s for a reason.
It all comes back to trust.
Light Expectations 