When Your View is Blurry

When you look at this photo, what do you see first? The sunset, the road, or the raindrops on the windshield? I took the photo from the passenger seat to capture a sunset we were enjoying one evening on the road. But the sun is so distant, the road consumes most of the shot. And the rain drops reflecting on the glass make the whole scene fuzzy.

This picture is a great metaphor for life. We have a future in the distance that we’re heading towards. But many days life is made up of a lot of pavement. Pavement that can get long and hard and boring if we look at too long without glancing at the scenery around us. Then there are the times in life when everything blurs behind the rain of problems and uncertainty.

The apostle Paul wrote of this blur in a famous essay on love recorded in I Corinthians chapter 13.  We know it as the love chapter and often hear it quoted at weddings. But he’s speaking of the agape type of love rather than romantic love. A love framed in sacrificial effort on behalf of the recipient. The kind of love that God has for us.  Paul acknowledged that we are walking through this life with incomplete information. We can’t see life with as much clarity as we’d like. We certainly can’t see it like God can.

So what do we do when we can’t see clearly? Paul said it this way in The Message translation.

¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. I Corinthians 13:12-13 [MSG]

What strikes me is that we would expect two of three of these instructions. If life is blurry with its rain, the advice to trust in God and not give up hope sounds appropriate. It’s a “hang in there” kind of hug.

But love? Love extravagantly? What is up with that advice? Who has time to love like that when the windshield wipers are swishing so fast I can hardly see the road? You said it’s the greatest of the three? Better than trusting and hoping that things turn out for me? A love that costs me something rather than the one that reciprocates? Yeah, that’s the one.

Lord, when life is blurring my view with uncertainty, help me remember that’s the time to love others. Sacrificially. Extravagantly. Like You love me. Things are getting clearer now.