Kirby and I have been doing a lot of driving lately…which means I’ve had a lot of seat time in the Mustang to think. Sitting in the passenger seat I see buildings new and old, businesses, a farmer working his field, small towns, and people flash by. I can’t help but think about perspective. My sister, Celinda, is a very talented artist and instructor at Iowa State University’s College of Design. I greatly admire her pure heart and compassion for people. In receiving her Masters Degree a few years ago, she did a powerful thesis highlighting the very topic of perspective called “Tunnel Vision”. You can download and read it here.

In fact it’s her project that I have playing through my mind like a movie reel as we roll down the road. To paint a picture for you of what the project looked like (paint a picture…appropriate right?! Ha! Okayy…anyway haha) Imagine entering on the end of a rectangular shaped room. Down the middle of the room you see a pathway leading you to the end of the room and the end of your journey. There is a clear material draped from the ceiling to the floor lining the sides of your path representing windows. There are projections of Facebook, Instagram, email, Pinterest, YouTube videos, and games on the floor for the entirety of the path. Beyond the clear material on the sides of the path are paintings of the scenery Celinda often sees on her travels between Missouri and Iowa.

Do you see where I’m going with this? What made journeying through her project unique is that the person on this journey had a specific choice to make. Walking through, we could look up and out of the window to take in the sheer beauty in the paintings or we could choose to look down with tunnel vision at the media projected onto the ground. Take a moment to think about this…

What Celinda created was a brilliant illustration of tunnel vision and how she is sensing the Lord’s desire for us to bring what’s important back into perspective. We live in a world where we are driven with staying connected and staying  busy on our phones. I ALWAYS have my phone on me and check it often…even if it didn’t buzz. The things we can accomplish from our cell phones and the technology of our world today is absolutely mind blowing. Technology has opened so many doors of opportunity for business, for ministry, for outreach, and so much more including enabling me to write this blog; however, it was never meant to be a source of identity…rather simply a tool.

Riding in the car seeing life passing by before my eyes, glancing down at my phone in my lap, and then turning to see Kirby flash a smile at me…gosh I just get emotional. I don’t want to be so consumed that I live my life through the lens of my phone and finally look up to see that I’m an old woman and have missed it. I want to see, to feel, to experience LIFE in 3D even if a single sole never knows about it. What we feel like is so important on the screens of our phones is temporary, but what is happening through the window of the car for example, is only for a moment. We will never get that moment back.

What’s really important here? Are we placing value on what’s really meaningful?What about the little moments we miss because we simply aren’t paying attention. We are present, but not really present. Social, but actually rather antisocial. We leave these moments browsing Facebook or Instagram and find that not only has significant time passed by, but also feeling dissatisfied. We live life passively, neglecting opportunities to be authentic and genuine.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.” – Galatians 5:22

I needed to take a moment to remember that I have the fruit of the spirit within me, thus I have the self control to set my phone aside and not let my phone or work or whatever it may be control me. Time is so, sooo precious. I want to live with God’s lens of perspective for every moment, so I don’t miss a single thing. Let’s put life in proper perspective and value the things that God values. God’s lens makes things that we thought were so big and important seemingly insignificant in the light of eternity and His Word and His goodness. In thinking about your own life, is the lens in which you are perceiving life through right now going to produce the fulfilled, impactful, meaningful, significant life you have envisioned for yourself?