360 Degree View

I need to tell you that I have found the most amazing spot in my entire city with the most spectacular view, and the convenience of it is too good to be true. It's right over my own head - my roof. 

Climb up the Dagara ladder around 6:30 pm and you can look to the west and watch a 30 to 45 minute show of clouds and colors as the sun sets behind the mountains. If you make it up there by 5:30 am and scootch out to the farthest southern corner, you can see around the big tree with the yellow flowers and watch the sun peek over the eastern horizon. If you lay up there flat on your back at night, you can see an uncountable array of twinkling stars and this weird phenomenon that they call a star cloud that looks like the Milky Way except it's not.

Or if you want to, you can stand up there and watch a rain storm blow in, like I did for the first time today. 

The clouds to the north were dark and brewing, layers upon layers as far as the eye could see. They looked soft and smooth, but all swirled together, kind of like gray icing after it's been blended really well, and the whips from the spatula's edges make a unique pattern on top. They seemed to be moving from the northwest to the southeast, but then when I looked to the east, the clouds over there seemed to be moving directly from the south towards the northwest. I watched the sheets of rain fall like gray stripes in the sky, moving over the most distant mountains and covering them up w a blanket of gray until I couldn't see them anymore. 

I heard thunder, which surprisingly seemed to come from the west, so I turned that way to see a gray cloud just hovering right over there, like I could reach out and touch it if I were just a little higher. I watched it blow by and join the others over there by my neighbor's roof. 

No matter which direction I turned, I could watch the clouds and the sky and the storm coming. There was not a single direction that was uninteresting. It was like I was the very center and the storm was coming in from all directions but not touching me. The longer I watched, the more I couldn't tell which way it was coming from or which way it was actually going, except that it was coming closer. And If I looked long enough in one particular direction, I could literally watch the sky transform before my very eyes as the clouds shifted and light and darkness danced, but I couldn't; I kept turning and turning and watching this 360 degree show play out. It was breathtakingly spectacular. 

One time, I saw lighting strike. Not the kind that happens over there in the corner of your eye and so your eyes dart that way to see the final effects. No, I was looking right there when it happened and I saw the whole thing from start to finish, even though it was only a split second. Do you realize how rare that actually happens? Maybe it's just me, but I'm hardly ever looking right where lighting will be before it actually happens. It's usually a glance afterwards, but not this time. My eyes were there already, and the display was amazing. 

Little drops started to fall and I waited it out until the last minute, when I realized that being on top of my tin roof in a lighting storm might not be the smartest idea, so I descended just in time for the heavens to break open and the rain to pour down. I'm sitting here on the porch watching it. It's been raining the whole time I've been writing this. And although the view isn't as good from down here, I can see that the sky has turned to a solid, dull gray, but the eastern sky is clearing. I can feel the cool after-rain wind blowing, and I can hear the different sounds that rain makes as it hits hard dirt or puddles or drips off the ends of tree branches. 

When was the last time you had a breathtaking 360 degree view? Not just of a storm or a landscape, but of your life? Sometimes I think we all need to climb up and look entirely around at the things that God is doing in our lives, for our perspective on the ground can be limited. We see one way or another, but it hard to get the full picture sometimes. And I think sometimes we desperately need to see something greater or more vast than our normal, everyday, from-the-ground view. Or I know I do at least. 

I suppose as long as we live on this earth in our imperfect bodies, we will never have a full perspective of what God is up to in our lives. We are too small, and he is too big. We see in part while he sees in full. We are limited by our human understanding; he is unbound by eternity. So to some extent, we'll never know, which is why I love what John piper said: "God is always doing ten thousand things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them." 

But at the same time, God gives us rooftop moments where we can take a moment to turn around and around and get a bigger view of everything he is doing in and around us. But we have to be intentional - to climb up, to get off the ground, to open our eyes, and to look around to get a bigger view than what we normally see. 

It's cool to me how my missions experience started on a rooftop in Nicaragua when I was in the tenth grade. I could climb up there and see all the mountains in all directions surrounding the city, and it was just me and God up there, and I told him how much I loved what he is doing among the nations. 

And now again, he has given me a rooftop. A place where I can climb up and see all around in every direction and in the same way, look at my life and thank him for all the ways he is working in and around and through me. It gives me perspective. It widens my view. It expands my thoughts about who God is. It gives me hope. 

Where is your rooftop? Where can you go to be alone with the Lord and ask him to show you his glory in all directions of your life? Take a moment to go there, to look around to the right and to the left, before and behind you. Your past, present, future. Your here, there, and everywhere. Even if it's all a storm, I pray you watch it roll in and still see how gloriously beautiful and extraordinary it is. 

It's stopped raining now, I think. The drips I hear now are just from the roof and the trees. Oh look, there is even a patch of blue now over there to the left! I think I will climb up on the roof again because the view is better from up there.