Focusing on the true Big Picture – This is the preeminent life struggle.
It’s like a bee flies into your car while you are driving. Your focus is “Bee sting versus No bee sting”… so you get distracted by the bee, swerve your car, maybe crash… You aren’t thinking in terms of Life and Death. If you re-framed your focus to be “Bee sting versus Crash my car and die” I think you’d gladly take the bee sting.
I think of this Bee Sting scenario often – but primarily when thinking of other people’s choices. Like “How can’t they see that they are focusing on the wrong thing?”
But as I was reflecting on this today I realized how guilty I am of this too… I’m not really surprised, it makes sense to struggle to “see the forest for the trees” when you are concentrating on an issue or asking God for guidance on a particular issue. But in reading Fr. Dave Pivonka’s Breath of God last night I read about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the section on “Counsel” and I came to realize just how often I lack the Big Picture Focus.
By “realize” I mean he had specifically written out questions I have asked… So it was more like “Oh that’s exactly me!” rather than my having to extrapolate. Now I do ask “God, what am I supposed to do with my life?” quite often. And while I hope for crystal clarity and long-term vision I feel like I haven’t quite gotten that level of direction yet. I constantly try to discern what it is, but I feel like I can never see what the path is. I sometimes know what I want the path to be, but also often I have so much uncertainty about which path to choose that I just want God to tell me.
Upon reflecting more I realize that what I actually tend to do is more like “Bee sting OR No bee sting – Whatever you want God!” instead of “Bee sting vs Whatever you want God!” or even better just “Whatever you want God!”
I am hopeful that with this realization that I will re-frame my prayers. Not sure exactly how to do that at the moment. But it is nice to see how inadequate my prayers are and how I thought I was doing it well, but how insufficiently I actually am doing it. Because I also know that God wants me to find then choose His path. He is loving and wants me to choose Him. I sure think I would love it if He clearly showed me what I am supposed to choose and then my decision was between “Obey versus Disobey”. He could tell me what to do, but He is so loving that He wants me to really listen, choose, then follow.
So the struggle continues… I search for the true Big Picture while trying not to get distracted by the bees.
Give God Your Yes 