Shortly after we got Chloe as a 9 week old puppy, we had a pile of dirt delivered. Eventually it became the base for our carport slab, but for several weeks it sat there as we dealt with one problem after the other, most notably eye surgeries. Chloe loved that pile of dirt. She sat on top of it every day. I suppose because she was little, it made her feel bigger, especially with an older dog who was not too friendly at the beginning.
But she has continued to love sitting up high. We often catch her perched on the landscaping timbers surrounding our raised flower beds, surveying her domain. It may only be six inches higher than the field, but that is enough for her. Chloe will always love to be on top of her world.
But even the highest she can sit does not help her see through the woods to the next property. All she knows of the world is our small five acres. She cannot comprehend that other dogs live in other places far, far away. Sometimes she hears the neighbor’s dogs barking across the fence, through the woods and over the creek, and she sits up to listen, but when they stop, she forgets they are even there.
Chloe’s world is Chloe-centric. Despite the fact that we have a consciousness of others, we are much the same. What happens to us is what matters to us. How my life goes is the important thing to me. That can cause us big problems when things begin to go wrong, just as it did for Rebekah.
“Why am I even alive?” she asked God when she began to have trouble with her pregnancy. For twenty years she had been barren. It was almost cruel of God, she must have thought, to give her what she had asked for and then make it seen that he was taking it back. But God told her that she was not losing her baby. Far from it, she was carrying twins, and this pregnancy was more far reaching than just fulfilling her desire to have a child. Two nations would come from her, he said, and the older would serve the younger, Gen 25:23. Yet even with those encouraging words, Rebekah still got it wrong. She thought the prophecy was about her children themselves, not the nations that would come from them, and in her zeal to help God make it happen, she deceived her husband when the time came to bless those sons. She forgot something as basic as this—maybe blind Isaac could not see whom he was blessing, but God could. He did not need her help to accomplish his purpose, and his purpose is what mattered.
We cannot see over the fence to know God’s purposes. What happens to me, no matter how large it is to me, may be completely insignificant in the plan of God. That does not mean He does not care about me. It does not mean He is not listening to me and answering my prayers. But it may very well mean that I will not understand the answer I get, or even like it much. Sitting on top of my little dirt pile will not give me God’s perspective. I simply trust, believe, and obey. God knows what is best. He really does sit on high. He really does see it all. That should be all that matters.
Who is like unto Jehovah our God, who has set his seat on high, who humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth? Psa 113:5.
Dene Ward
But she has continued to love sitting up high. We often catch her perched on the landscaping timbers surrounding our raised flower beds, surveying her domain. It may only be six inches higher than the field, but that is enough for her. Chloe will always love to be on top of her world.
But even the highest she can sit does not help her see through the woods to the next property. All she knows of the world is our small five acres. She cannot comprehend that other dogs live in other places far, far away. Sometimes she hears the neighbor’s dogs barking across the fence, through the woods and over the creek, and she sits up to listen, but when they stop, she forgets they are even there.
Chloe’s world is Chloe-centric. Despite the fact that we have a consciousness of others, we are much the same. What happens to us is what matters to us. How my life goes is the important thing to me. That can cause us big problems when things begin to go wrong, just as it did for Rebekah.
“Why am I even alive?” she asked God when she began to have trouble with her pregnancy. For twenty years she had been barren. It was almost cruel of God, she must have thought, to give her what she had asked for and then make it seen that he was taking it back. But God told her that she was not losing her baby. Far from it, she was carrying twins, and this pregnancy was more far reaching than just fulfilling her desire to have a child. Two nations would come from her, he said, and the older would serve the younger, Gen 25:23. Yet even with those encouraging words, Rebekah still got it wrong. She thought the prophecy was about her children themselves, not the nations that would come from them, and in her zeal to help God make it happen, she deceived her husband when the time came to bless those sons. She forgot something as basic as this—maybe blind Isaac could not see whom he was blessing, but God could. He did not need her help to accomplish his purpose, and his purpose is what mattered.
We cannot see over the fence to know God’s purposes. What happens to me, no matter how large it is to me, may be completely insignificant in the plan of God. That does not mean He does not care about me. It does not mean He is not listening to me and answering my prayers. But it may very well mean that I will not understand the answer I get, or even like it much. Sitting on top of my little dirt pile will not give me God’s perspective. I simply trust, believe, and obey. God knows what is best. He really does sit on high. He really does see it all. That should be all that matters.
Who is like unto Jehovah our God, who has set his seat on high, who humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth? Psa 113:5.
Dene Ward
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