On the outside of a certain wall I know there is a dirt field. Weeds have grown up and died, trash has accumulated over time and the entire area seems an unfit place for any growth or prosperity.
If you stood on this side of the wall for any length of time, you would be hungry, thirsty, and would reap no benefit from any form of civilization, excepting the well built wall, of course. The wall is too tall to see over, so you could not see what was on the other side--
--Unless you were able to fly up above the wall and see over it to the other side.
On the other side is a thriving center of prosperity. On the other side, people bring their pets to have them groomed. They donate clothes to the needy. They dine in and have pizza, wings, and enjoy coffee at an outdoor cafe on a beautiful patio. They buy groceries, have medicines dispensed, get pedicures, manicures, haircuts and drop off clothes to be dry-cleaned. Teenagers skateboard around the lot and neighbors often chat congenially when they meet in this square. No one gives a bother about the dirt lot on the other side, except to wonder when it will be developed.
It's all a matter of perspective.
This is how life can be. Often we are so close to a healthy and wholesome existence, and don't know it. We must pass by and even through the empty barren dirt lot to get to the other side, the side where health and wholeness are so obvious that we almost forget about the dirt lot.
If you are walking through the dirt lot right now, or even have been stuck there for a while, do not lose hope that there is something on the other side. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.
I've been learning that we are so ever-loving impatient to have things our way that we often forget that God has the perspective of all of time. We do not. We want things, and we want them now. Sometimes not getting what you want is a gift in itself. Trust the One with the bird's eye perspective. He sees through all the walls.
