In focus.

                                                                                                    Photo by Sarah Kuipers - July 2012              

Isn't it wonderful how God prepares us? How He knows our every thought and longing and struggle? Ahead of time? 

That blows my mind.

Last week, I was in a really good place. I've been struck these last few weeks with such a desire, a longing, for God's own heart, that it almost hurts.

My heart is seeking His, with a new intensity.

I felt so very focused on Him. It was glory. His glory.

As I marveled at this last week, praying it out, reading Scripture, thinking... I started thinking of how that unity, that sight and focus, is always there. I just don't always see it. Because I don't focus.

Something to know about me - I like metaphors. They help me, so usually when God is teaching me something, I wrestle with it by struggling with metaphor until I find (or God gets me to understand) one that fits.

This week, thinking about all-consuming desire and focus on God started as a mental diagram. Me and God. Nothing in between.

What happens when I stop focusing? Me and God with a problem in the middle, keeping me from seeing Him?

This is what it seemed like - my metaphor - at first. Me, and something solid, like wood or concrete, blocking my view. But that didn't quite seem to fit. I don't think anything ever comes into our path that is so opaque that we cannot see God in it and through it (although sometimes that focus is much, much harder than other times).

Perhaps, just perhaps, instead of it being a hard object, it is more like a mist. A cloud. Tiny water droplets that obstruct my view but don't obscure it. Little drops that when together make visibility difficult.

Perhaps then, it is my focus, not the problem, that keeps me from that unity with Him.

Allow me another analogy. In photography, you can set your f-stop or aperture to increase or decrease your depth-of-field - what is in focus or what is not.

When I focus on that mist, I have a shallow depth-of-field. The droplets are in focus but everything else (including God) is blurred. Hazy. Should I choose to expand that focus, everything becomes clear. Having God in focus keeps Him as my focal point, my purpose for the "photograph," and then the mist is clear too.

Thinking back on the last few days, God knew that I needed to know this. I've struggled this week. Many hours at work and not enough soul rest.

Perhaps I have narrowed my focus. Perhaps I have spent so much time looking at the water droplets that I forgot to focus on the God who I didn't see but never left.

Maybe I even let my lens break a little. But, thanks be to God, He takes joy in taking the broken things in life, in my life and in yours, fixing the crack in the lens and the error in aperture, and restoring them to make it beautiful again, for His kingdom and because of His love.