Look At Me

I have sought your face with all my heart;  be gracious to me according to your promise.  Psalm 119:58 (NIV)

On Sunday afternoon, we were heading home from a long afternoon of swimming.  It’s what we do in Texas to survive the long, hot summers, and all you have to do is walk outside and watch your glasses fog up to know without a doubt that summer is indeed here!   I have shared in the past that my daughter is the opposite of graceful.  Her middle name may be "Grace," but only because God has a sense of humor.  Lilly is constantly falling down and bumping into things.  I have kissed more "ouchies" in her short two years than I can count.

On our walk from the pool to the car, Lilly, holding my hand, suddenly tripped over her own feet and scraped her knee on the sidewalk.  When I helped her back up, she looked down at her knee, horrified by the trickle of blood that ran down her leg.  Immediately, she began crying and pointing at her newly incurred injury.  We were so close to the car, and I did not have anything in my pool bag to help clean her up.  Everything was in the car.  I knew she was not really hurt, but the thought of blood gushing out of her knee was just too much for her to bear.  I knew that in the car, ten feet away, I had wipes, band-aids and everything else necessary to treat the damage caused by clumsy genes. 

As I walked towards the parking lot, holding my screaming daughter, I kept telling her, “Look at Momma!  Don’t look at your knee… Look at me.  Look at Momma!”  I realized that she was getting more and more upset as she stared at the blood on her knee.  I wanted her to focus on me instead.  I wanted to tell her that I knew she was hurt.  I wanted her to hear me say that I would make it all better. Momma would clean it up, kiss it, and dry her tears.  But, she was too consumed with the problem: her bloody knee. 

I think David was a man who understood that he was better off staring into the face of God, who could save him, rather than focusing on all the danger lurking around him.  In Psalm 119:123, he writes, "My eyes strain to see your rescue, to see the truth of your promise fulfilled." (NLT) 

I've been where my daughter's been.  Staring at my own hurt, completely oblivious to the fact that Jesus was waiting for me to look at Him instead of at myself.  Concentrating on the immense size of my crisis, I lost sight of how big my God is.  Whatever I am facing, He is always bigger.  Always.

I wonder what would happen if we all started looking into the face of our Maker instead of all the troubles we are in "knee-deep."  I wonder what would happen if we quit staring at the horror of our own wounds and let Him heal us the way He intends to.  I wonder what would happen if we truly trusted Him, let go of our fears, and believed that He is able to work all things for good.  I bet, maybe, just maybe, those mountains we stand before might start to appear as little hills instead.  When we start putting one foot in front of the other, looking up to Him, He promises to get us where He's leading us, safely.

The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.  Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand.  Psalm 37:23-24 (NLT)