Re-focusing

Yes, this is an incredibly early spring.  Listening to NPR yesterday, I was surprised to discover there are people who pay particular attention to such things and the impact such unseasonable weather has on the natural world.  Perhaps it is more of interest with all the discussion these days on global warming.  The study of this is called phenology.  I have always been one to delight in new words as well as new ways of looking at things.  I wrote about this on the other blog this morning:  allwillbewellperiod.blogspot.com   

Here, though, the purpose is different.  Here Lent continues, no matter what the weather or temperature.  Lent is its own season.  There may be different reminders of change, of transition, every year, but Lent arrives and offers us a defined period of time to look at ourselves, our spiritual life, our relationship with the people and world around us.   It gives us the opportunity to re-focus on what is truly important.  Sometimes this means clearing our heads of what is not important.

Consider this:

The robins have returned, and I swear, they wake up at 3 AM.  They remind me how easy it is to be distracted by their incessant chirping, even while I delight in watching them hunt for worms during the day:  hop, hop, head tilt, hop, hop, head tilt.   What do you allow to distract you from your focus on God?  How do you see the people, the creatures (maybe the children) God has put in your life?  How might you blink, take a moment, and re-focus on what they have to offer you?  And then, perhaps, how might you consider what you have to offer them?

Being caught

Sometimes I find myself catching sight of the bigger picture.  It*s not like I determine to do this.  It*s more like it catches me.  Often it catches me up short.   By bigger picture I mean all those times that I realize there*s so much more to things, to people, than the way I experience them.   Certainly there are circumstances which make these times more likely.   Circumstances like death, or tragedy, or perhaps even something small like someone acting completely outside of the way I have characterized him or her.  These moments come all the time, really, but it is only sometimes that I can stick with it.  It is only sometimes that I allow it to catch me, so indeed I might be changed.

Consider this:

Where have you caught sight of the bigger picture recently?  Where have you realized that it*s all so much more than you could imagine all by yourself?  Often it comes when we are surprised into it, when we are caught up short.  How have you let yourself be caught?  Caught so that you stayed with it for awhile.  Caught so that you learned, you gleaned new understanding, from the experience? Caught so that the way you see the world, that very world God has made, the same world in which God continues to act, That World... is made bigger.