Vantage Point

Let me tell ya something: I like Google Earth; I could spend hours on it! I love exploring the places I've always wanted to visit; swooping down from my perch atop some satellite orbiting beyond the stratosphere, I glide above the landscape viewing the topography as it slides by in an amazing, pseudo-three dimensional display; free to descend upon any place on the globe. I can leap from Antarctica to Alberta in a single bound; even faster than that comic book fella I might add! In many venues I can even touch down for a ground-level view and peer around in all directions! It's amazing; the things we can do while never actually pushing away from our desks. We peck at our keyboards, point & click and we're talking with folks 12 time-zones away; even seeing them with a face-to-face display!

When I was a boy - I don't know, maybe ten or eleven years old, I spent hours meticulously mapping my neighborhood. It was a one square-mile slice of suburban Detroit and by the time I was done I knew every running-foot of every street and sidewalk. I plotted parks, woods, streams, schools, my favorite climbing trees, the neighborhood bully's house; any landmark of interest to a boy that age. It was done to scale on a piece of graph paper. My bicycle had an odometer which I used to measure the distances as I pedaled along. Occasionally I'd stop to record the data in my notebook (back then, a notebook didn't have a battery, keyboard, & flash drive). That was some thirty five years ago and I can still vividly recall the details of that project. I don't need Google to "fly"around that neighborhood; Its image is indelibly etched in my mind!
Whether it be a pencil sketch of my childhood stomping-grounds or a digital trip to the Grand Canyon, it's merely an image; a rendering on a two-dimensional medium. We're viewing a re-creation of how someplace appeared at some moment in the past. Never the less, it's one of the ways we can know this terrestrial sphere we call home. Unless we leave our footprints somewhere using our five senses to experience our surroundings, we must settle for an image; a trip on Google Earth or perhaps a well-crafted paragraph or two.

So here I sit with scarcely more than two hours remaining in this the year of our Lord, 2008; realizing that all I can really perceive is what I can lay hold of in the present or remember from the past. Like yours, my mind is a file cabinet filled with selections from a life-time of experiences; pleasant ones as well as not so pleasant ones. Do you ever wish you could "Google Earth" your childhood; maybe do a fly-over of your first day of kindergarten? I wonder what we'd see. Would it match the memories we've tucked away in that old file cabinet sitting atop our shoulders? We're prone to mark only the more memorable things; me and my old neighborhood map for example. Yet, most of our days are lost in the fog of fading recollections. After all, there's only so much storage capacity in these craniums of ours; being dulled by many a generation begotten since the curse of Adam.
So what I'm getting at is this: Our perceptions are at best slightly fragmented. Perhaps they're skewed by inaccurate or incomplete recollections. Yet we who have such a myopic view of the past as well as our current state of affairs so arrogantly insist upon prognosticating about the year to come! I've always been rather dubious of such annual forecasts; especially those bold declarations commonly known as New Years resolutions. A man; perhaps me or you, flawed and totally depraved being born in sin, rises and solemnly announces his new creation; himself - only better than last year's model!
Do you have a deep and profound sense that something is amiss with your life? You are hearing the call of your Savior, Jesus Christ resounding in your heart! You can continue to plan your life as best you can; given your very limited vantage point, or you can trust in He who sees with perfect clarity every thought you've had, every word you've uttered, and every deed you've done. Furthermore, He sees the road before you; beyond the hills, through the valleys, and 'round the curves. No one can plan your course and heading as can He!
If you resolve to do anything, let it be this: That you will forsake the prevailing winds of contemporary wisdom; the dogmas of modern man and your natural bent toward building a monument unto yourself and make Jesus Christ Lord of your life. A favorite quote of mine was penned by the late Jim Elliott. Jim was one of five missionaries martyred in Ecuador 53 years ago next week; he wrote,

"He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose".

As I prepare to post this, my prayer is that you will have a prosperous 2009 and that your life will be filled with all that the Lord desires for you.
Please read James 4: 13-16

A Google-view of the old neighborhood as it appears today. A few new roads were built since I drew my map of this 1-mile x 1-mile area
but it hasn't changed all that much since then.
I grew up in a home near the center of this photo. In fact, you can
go there yourself
Boy, the current owners sure let the lawn go; it was like a piece of green carpet back when I was taking care of it!