Can You See What God Sees?

I was having breakfast with a friend and discussing past relationships --exchanging war stories, you might say. When speaking of his divorce, he said, "It sounds crazy, but what really bothered me was that I could see just how good it could be between us; but she didn't get it." Not crazy at all. I've heard that divorce can be for some, like the death of a dream. I was standing in my kitchen the day I realized I was grieving what might have been. I'd had a vision of what my marriage would be: a growing old together thing, a 'til death do us part thing. I was, when it came to my ex-husband and I, apparently, the only one who could see the vision. My friend felt the same way in his circumstance. Why stay married? our exes argued. They couldn't see. 

As my friend and I talked that day, God began impressing upon me the importance of vision. Do you know that God has a vision? Not just for everybody, but for each everybody. John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." His vision is for the world and each and every whoever who will believe in His Son, Jesus, as the Lord and their Redeemer. Ephesians 1:4 says that those who are in Christ were chosen before the foundation of the world. Even before God created this perfectly designed place for us to live and breathe and thrive, He knew our names and had a vision for us. 

When it comes to the visions my friend and I had for our relationships, we couldn't tell our exes how many children we would have, or what they would look like, or how --exactly-- we'd be able to afford our mortgage each month, or even guarantee neither of us would ever get COPD or laid off from a job or suffer a breakdown. Maybe it was that very lack of specifics that made the visions too scary for our exes to stick around. As spouses, they were going to have to trust us when their eyes would not allow them to see for themselves. Perhaps, as their spouses, my friend and I didn't always prove to be perfectly trustworthy; maybe there was trauma in their pasts they allowed to prevent them from trusting, no matter how trustworthy we were. 

Our relationships, specifically our marriages are meant to be a picture of our relationship with Jesus. You see, God doesn't always lay out every detail of His vision for us either. We don't always know if the IVF will work, or if our children will be healthy, or if we will be approved for the mortgage, or if we will ever be well or employed or free of suffering this side of heaven. And maybe it's that very lack of specifics that has kept you from coming to Jesus or following too closely. As our Spouse, Christ has promised He is with us always and He is working on our behalf, preparing a place for us in heaven, giving us peace, guarding our hearts and minds, enabling us to obey, and making intercession for us. We can trust Him when our eyes will not allow us to see the vision for ourselves. He is perfectly trustworthy. Whatever trauma or betrayal we have experienced in our past, whatever things may have caused us to mistrust everyone or maybe even, lay aside dreams, those things can be healed, redeemed by the truth of God's Word and the renewing of our minds in Christ Jesus.

Someday, who knows when, maybe you and I will meet in Heaven. We won't be swapping war stories or questioning why we stayed, I'm sure. But I imagine us sitting over a cup of coffee, laughing and telling one another how the plan God had for our lives on earth was shocking, unpredictable, bigger than anything we could imagine, and the most magnificent ride we had ever been on! All we had to do was trust the God who sees the vision.