In the Connection of The Dots

"Your awareness of my presence falters and flickers; as a result, your life experience feels fragmented. When your focus is broad enough to include me in your thoughts, you feel safe and complete. When your perception narrows so that problems or details fill your consciousness, you feel empty and incomplete. Learn to look steadily at me in all your moments and all your circumstances. Though the world is unstable and in flux, you can experience continuity through your uninterrupted awareness of my presence." --Sarah Young

As I read this today, an image formed in my mind:

I think sometimes we think of our lives in dots. We mark an event with one dot, the next major event with another dot, the next with another, etc. and then when we think back on our lives or project forward with our thoughts, we see only the dots of major events. While it is true that life occurs during those dots, it must be remembered that so much more of life occurs during the connections. It's like a game of connect the dots. The dots alone don't look like much. But when you add the lines of connection between, the picture becomes perfectly clear.

I imagine that God, through Time, creates with us the line of connection between. And I imagine that the journey from one dot to the next is the place where God in God's richness most fully dwells. The line may be straight. Or it may be jagged. Or it may be crooked. Or it may be swirly. There are endless possibilities in how connections can be made--in what we can create with God--and, really, I think that's the beauty and joy that we get to experience in life.

I fear that too often, however, we reduce our lives to "dots"--to definite points--to right and wrong--to good and bad--and we create for ourselves situations that limit us in fear rather than open us to possibility. I fear that too often we limit God to the dots, too--to the right job, to the right partner, to the right mission trip, to the right opportunity--and cause ourselves to believe that if we make a wrong decision--or choose the wrong dot--then God will not be there. And that burdens me so deeply...because that's not the God that I know and love.

The God that I know and love is the God who is with us at all times, at all places of our journey, influencing all decisions, creating opportunities for growth and redemption at all times, and nurturing God's spirit of steady love in all things. The God that I know and love--the God who desires that I be aware of his uninterrupted presence--does not harshly stand with a clipboard and wait for me to choose THE one right dot, rather he helps me draw the line that will take me to where I need to go and then continues to be with me when I get there.

I don't know how all of the dots of my life will fit together or what picture they will make in the end. But I do know this: I will seek to make my daily focus broad enough to include God in all my moments and circumstances and I will do my best not to limit my life or our God to the dots of major life events. I don't want to be fragmented, empty, or incomplete. And I believe that seeing God in the big picture of life--in the lines that connect the dots--WILL allow me to feel whole, safe, and complete.

I hope that you can believe the same.