Don't Miss the Alps

This morning, during my devotion, I was reading through Ephesians in The Message translation, and this verse stuck out to me:

"I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him—endless energy, boundless strength!" (Eph. 1:17-19)

Specifically, this phrase caught my attention: grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers.

Yesterday, I was having a conversation with a friend that took me back to one of the most challenging times in my life. It involved a rejection that made me question myself - what I thought of who I was, if I was worthy of being included, if whatever it was that I had to offer was valuable at all. Worse, if I was valuable at all. I know we all face rejection in life, in one way or another, and it can really do a number on us. It certainly did on me. I was trying to get to the heart of exactly what the damage was. What was the root of its lingering effects?

After some fits and starts, I was able to understand something like this. Before the rejection (that's still so uncomfortable to even write, still humiliating), I had the most expansive view of life, of possiblity, and a real openness of myself because I wasn't afraid to fully engage myself, undefended, and trust that I would be safe, that I would flourish. After the rejection, a lot that changed. My self- and world-view shrank. Where I saw possibility before, I didn't see much of anything. Where I felt excited about particpating and interacting before, I felt afraid, hesistant, and cynical.

Obviously, this changed how I lived. When I look back, I regret that so much.

As with most of this stuff, it's going on on the inside. No one else knows. We fake it for the world. I did, and was very good at it. I was wondering why someone didn't intervene and tell me that I was the same person before and after rejection? Then I realized that answer was because no one really knew what had changed inside me. I'm tough, self-reliant. I figured it out and moved on. Sort of.

The truth is, there was a lot of hurt that never healed and continues to effect my life in some ways to this day.

So, when I read Paul's prayer this morning that we, that I, would "grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers," I felt God saying, "Look up!"

I was immediately taken back to a trip I took my sophomore year in college. I was in Salzburg, I think (it may have been a town in Bavaria), touring a monastery. The day was overcast and the cloud cover was low. We had come into town the night before, so I had no idea of the landscape. This monastery was on a hill overlooking the town. It was surrounded by a wall that you could walk along. At points there were covered turrets with small windows. I stopped to look out through one of these windows, seeing the clouds and mist hanging over the picturesque town. And then, the sun began to burn off the clouds. It was split second in time that I went from seeing clouds to almost losing my breath at the new vista - I was standing at the foot of the Alps, the most glorious thing I had ever seen. I had no idea there were anything more than hills in this little town. How wrong I was!

I've never forgotten that moment or that feeling of being completely changed in a split second - of thinking I was in one kind of place but actually being somewhere much different - much better.

I think that's the change Paul's talking about, what he's praying for us. How many times are we convinced by what we see or what we think we see? By rejection, by failure, by loss, by betrayal, by something that robs us of life? Paul knows that, and he's begging God on our behalf that the clouds in our lives would burn off in the light of Christ and that would we see "the Alps" - "the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for us."

Then God reminded me of the picture I recently put on my desktop. For a period of my life (and still, at times), this is what I saw, what I had been tricked into believing and focusing on:

This "vista" is unclear, confusing, and uninspiring. But here's the actual picture on my desktop:

My prayer for myself today, and my prayer for you, is that we will look up and see what actually is - that we will grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for us.