Ridiculous Perspective… Lightning Bugs, Fireworks, and the Moon

Perspective is a strange thing sometimes, let me tell you. A couple weeks ago, my family and I went to a Fourth of July event to watch the fireworks, just like tons of others across America. Before the fireworks began, just as the sky was darkening, the moon rested right where the fireworks were positioned to be.

My husband and I laughed, noting how bright the moonlight was and hoping it wouldn’t interfere with the splendor of the fireworks. The moon had my full attention as the sky darkened, and I seriously wondered how distracting it would be next to the fireworks.

Then the fireworks began and I had to laugh at myself. The moon was hardly noticeable as bright lights and colors streaked in front and on all sides. The light of the moon was all but lost with such an eye-catching display in front of it.

A few minutes later, a bright light flashed right in front of me, brighter than the moon and even brighter than any firework. It disappeared, then flashed again. No one else seemed to notice. I blinked and looked again.

Seriously? A lightning bug hovered in the air in front of me. One solitary, half-inch lightning bug with a tiny light on its backside.

This bug must have been just three inches from my eyes, and its light was so bright, it blocked out the fireworks happening behind it…which blocked out the moon behind them.

How hilarious and ridiculous for a lightning bug to be so bright it blocked out all the other, much bigger and brighter lights!

But it gave me pause. (Yes, this is truly where my mind went in the middle of enjoying fireworks with friends!) How often is our perspective misaligned in life, leading us to focus on the things right in front of us at the expense of the bigger picture? I don’t know about you, but it happens to me all the time.

God hung the moon to give the entire earth a soft, glowing light. It’s enormous. Unstoppable. Reliable. A gift.

And yet, a tiny bug flashing its light right in front of my eyes was all it took to skew my perspective and derail my focus from the brighter, more glorious things.

When we focus too hard on the thing right in front of us, our view gets obstructed and our priorities can easily get misaligned. What are the fireworks or lightning bugs in your life right now? What is trying to rob your focus from the one-and-only true light source? Work? Finances? A relationship? A health crisis?

This is not to say the issues in life that hold our focus aren’t big or don’t require massive amounts of our energy and attention. But when we view them too closely for too long, we can forget there’s more to the story. We have limited knowledge, information, and perspective to understand from a spiritual perspective what’s really going on behind the scenes.

But God knows. Even when we’re confused, even when we’re hurt, and even when we’re angry, exhausted, or afraid. He knows the purposes behind all of it.

He’s the one directing all that’s happening behind the scenes. And if we take a step back to redirect our eyes and view the true source of light, we’ll find that his presence and peace as we wrestle through life’s problems are more reliable than even the predictable glow of the moon.

Someday we’ll know what he’s been up to all along. We just have to keep shifting our view from the flashy lights in front of us to his steady source of eternal light. It may not always be easy, but it will always be worth it. God is good, even when our perspective gets misaligned and we’re tempted to believe otherwise.

In a previous post of mine, God’s Ultimate Goal…, we talk about how important it is to remember all the good things God has done in our lives. Remembering is one of the most powerful ways to realign with God’s goodness.

The true Light of the World is reaching out to you; don’t let the lightning bugs or even the fireworks steal your focus.

If you’re going through something that has consumed your focus lately, can I pray for you? Just drop a comment below, and we’ll lift it to the Lord together.

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