It’s easy to see why people used to believe the sun revolved around the earth. It rises up from the horizon in the east, makes its way across the sky all day, sinks into the horizon in the west, and then the next morning, there it is in the east again. It seems that it’s just circling around us. By simply observing, that would make perfect sense.

Thanks to the development of the telescope, we have discovered we are not the center of the universe at all. We are just one of eight planets that circulates around the sun, and the sun is one of billions of stars in our galaxy. Scientific advances have given us proper perspective.

It is so easy to be stuck with an improper perspective when it comes to life. Why? There are a lot of things that SEEM right just by looking at them. But they may be totally false.

Sometimes my thoughts or emotions guide my perspective. I start believing things based on what I see or feel. When I was overwhelmed by grief, I thought the entire universe revolved around my loss and my pain. I felt like I was the only one in the world who had ever suffered such a tragedy. My own loss was all I could see. 

But that school year, as I began teaching American history to my sixth graders, it became apparent that my perspective was out of line. I became reminded of how many others had suffered the same tragic loss that I had. Stories that I had taught in the past without much of a second thought now jumped off the page! 

Thomas Jefferson lost four children, two in infancy. He carried a lock of his four-month-old daughter’s hair his entire life.

Grover Cleveland found the death of his twelve-year-old daughter Ruth “almost unbearable.”

Lincoln and his wife Mary entered the White House with two rowdy and precocious young sons, Willie, 11 and Tad, 8. They both came down with typhoid fever, and Tad recovered, but in two weeks, Willie was gone. They had already lost a toddler to tuberculosis ten years earlier. Mary became mentally ill and never recovered.

Theodore Roosevelt’s son Quentin, the youngest of six, was “a fine little bad boy” and the family favorite. When his plane was shot down during WWI at the age of 20, his father was broken-hearted and died six months later.

Dwight Eisenhower’s son Doud contracted scarlet fever at the age of four and died in his father’s arms. Dwight called it, “the greatest disappointment and disaster in my life.”

John F. Kennedy had to be pried away from his infant son’s coffin.

These were just a few of the stories that helped me look outside of myself and see a bigger picture. They led me to a more accurate perspective of the world and how my own grief fit in. 

But the best way to get proper perspective on life is by keeping immersed in the pages of the Bible. So many times reading the stories of Scripture helps broaden and clarify my point of view. In God’s Word, we see a bigger plan, a higher purpose. I am just a tiny speck in the grand scheme of things.  

“Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:10)  

And somehow, even though I am just a tiny speck, I am an important part of that plan. God, the Creator of the master plan, has woven me into the fabric of it all. Wow! 

“In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” (Ephesians 1:11)

The Bible is the telescope that enlightens us to the truth. Lord, let Your Word shape my perspective on all things!

(historynewsnetwork.org)