The BIG Picture

"Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed." - 1 Peter 1:13

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible, and it's one that has meant different things to me at different times in my life. Right now, it tells me that there is a big picture at work in the world, and in my life, and in your life - a big picture that's a whole lot more important than the little snapshots we tend to fixate on. Let me explain...

Hope is a concept that I've thought a lot about lately. I talk about how I "hope" that Vandy will get to the Sweet 16; I talk about how CARE for AIDS gives "hope" to people who have lost it; I talk about how I "hope" that God will reveal his plan for my future to me. In each one of those things I am "setting my hope" on something outside of myself - Kevin Stallings, Rosemary Wanjiku, and God, respectively. This verse tells me to set my hope on Christ - but not only on Christ himself, but on the grace that I will receive when He is revealed. I'm not sure exactly when Peter is talking about here - when Christ is revealed to the world (see Revelation) or when He is revealed to me as I stand before him after leaving this world - but I'm convinced that God wants me to anchor my hope in an event and a savior, both of which are a whole lot more important than what's happening right now.

Thus the Big Picture - not just my daily life, or even the scope of my life, but the ENTIRETY of my life in eternity. I've wondered and been asked at times how the CFA clients and workers can have so much hope, and I'm convinced it must be because they see their life here as only a tiny part of the big picture. When they are tying their hope to the eternity they will spend with a revealed Christ, it's not really worth getting upset about missing their matatu or eating bad food.

I notice (and I think you would too) that a hundred times a day we have a chance to look at an event in the small picture or in the big picture. Do we choose to react with anger at the temporary, or joy in the eternal? Do we choose the route that gives us pleasure now, or honor for eternity? Do we choose the things that won't count for anything on the day that Christ is revealed, or the things that will count for everything?

ps - I'm pretty small in this shot, but the bigger picture is a whole lot more interesting than my part, isn't it?