Perspective is Everything

3 little words…

I don’t know about you, but I have found the past few weeks pretty hard.

We’re now in our third national covid19 lockdown here in the UK, it’s cold and it’s rainy, and we’re all stuck at home again. It’s ten months on from when we were first put into restrictions, and it’s fair to say that everyone I speak to is feeling pretty weary.

When routines around work and school get constantly changed, and any future plans seems to be permanently up-ended, after a while it can really begin to take its toll. And the dreary winter weather only seems to increase that sense of isolation many of us currently feel.

It’s true that life doesn’t look at all how we want it to right now, but in the midst of all this, there are three little words are changing my life right now …

Magnify. the. Lord.

In Psalm 34:3 the psalmist encourages us, ‘Come, magnify the LORD with me’ and recently I have been trying to take up this invitation.

To ‘magnify’ God literally means to make God larger, and to give him more of the focus in our lives.

I don’t know about you, but whenever something goes wrong or feels challenging in my life, I can be so prone to stressing, worrying, over-obsessing and catastrophizing by immediately jumping to the worst-case scenario possible. It’s often hard for me to relax again until the problem is fixed or resolved.

But the problem with this is that lots of things in life can’t be instantly solved. Some solutions require patience, perseverance and trust because they take some time to unfold. And the truth is that all of over-focusing on and feeling defeated by the size of a problem rarely changes the situation at all. It only makes it seem larger and more insurmountable.

That’s why this practice of magnify God is changing my life right now…

And as we enlargen our focus on God, our problems tend to begin to shrink.

Of course, the decision to do this doesn’t mean an instant fix for all our problems; but it does change our perspective on them. And perspective is everything.

As our attention moves from the size of our problems to the greatness of our God, suddenly our worries seem so much smaller. And as we allow that perspective to lead us to awe and wonder, we discover fresh faith and courage to overcome.

Extending the invitation

So if, like me, you have been finding these recent days and weeks a bit hard going, can I extend this invitation to you too?
Practice shrinking your problems by magnifying God. Just spend some time reminding yourself of his greatness today.