I just finished a mini vacation to Hawaii. I say mini because it was only five days long. For most folks, it takes 3 days just to get accustomed to the time change and another day or two to finally stop reaching for your cellphone to check on work! But for me, five days is just perfect. I’m naturally an early riser so it doesn’t take much for my body’s time clock to reset to wherever I am.
Since I am an early riser, my favorite thing to do is be up before the rest of the busy world gets moving. I love to sit with my coffee and my Bible and have a lovely chat with Jesus. And the views from the tropical islands of Hawaii feel like a personal gift from the God who created the heavens and the earth; Hawaii is a bit of both.
One morning I wanted to take a pic of the view from my balcony. As I was snapping away, watching the lights constantly change as the sun was coming up over the horizon, I thought I’d try using the time-lapse setting on my phone. I’ve never really had much need to use it. Oh my goodness, what fun it was once I figured it out! The hardest part was remaining patient as I help my camera as still as possible waiting for the proper amount of time to pass so there would actually be something to look at!
I got to thinking about my life through the lens of God’s time-lapse. What may feel like an eternity to me, like waiting for the photo to capture all the shots to be strung together for my video, is a tiny blip on God’s eternal timeline. When it feels like life is just chugging along and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, I wonder if I will see it differently once I get to heaven.
Life has sometimes felt like it was taking forever to show any results of my hard work. There have been little things that I let slip by because they just seemed inconsequential. Moments of busyness that I had to let slide so I could focus on what I thought were the big things that mattered.
But I wonder, when I get to heaven and the video of my life is played out, will it be like the time-lapse photo? Where the little things gather together to make something big and beautiful, like the clouds moving together and then away from each other? It’s nearly imperceptible when watching with the naked eye, but when you slow everything down and watch the time-lapse replay, you can see the beauty they make as they shift and move, making room for the sun’s rays to shine through.
I’m going to use my mini vacation as a reminder that my life is meant to be viewed through God’s time-lapse. Then and only then can all of the colors and movements be fully viewed and understood. Through God’s time-lapse, my little blip on the timeline may be short, but my life is still a part of His master plan for a world of beauty!
Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom. Satisfy us each morning with Your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. – Psalms 90:12, 14
