How disappointing it can be to wake up to a fresh snow fall when April finally arrives and gone with it is the hope for a long anticipated sunny warm spring day!

 

It is one of many unfulfilled expectations of what we think our life should be. Our human nature simply reacts to our limited perspective on life. Had a light melting snow fallen on a mild 36 degree day in February, we might have been more delighted than depressed given the typical mid-winter day!

 

The prophet Isaiah (6:9) speaks of a timeless truth which is repeated many times in Scripture, most notably by Jesus and later St. Paul. In Matthew’s Gospel (13:13-14), when the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks to them in parables, he responds with the words of Isaiah: “You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look but never perceive.” We are neither the first nor the only generation who often sees what we want to see and consequently loses sight of the whole picture that God has for us.

 

In Romans (11:33-34), Paul again refers to another of Isaiah’s writings, when he says: “O the depth of riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord?” Isaiah’s words present a bigger perspective : “It is he (God) who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain…” God’s vision is the big picture and the one we often miss from our limited human perspective. That is where our hope and trust in the promises of Jesus Christ can fill in a bigger picture for us. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” we are told in Hebrews.

 

Jesus tells his disciples again in Matthew 13, that “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven…” and “Blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears, for they hear.” Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Spirit; give us a new and more complete perspective. “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen is made from things that are not visible.”   “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)

 

What will you look at and really see today? Look again at the picture. It is indeed an April day but in reality is a path lined with apple blossoms not snow!

Maureen Oostdik