Perspective - Is Your View that of a Field Mouse or a Hawk?

Hawks can see up to eight times better than humans.This is roughly 20/5 to 20/2 compared to our normal 20/20 vision, and that’s if you don’t already need glasses. One swooped down from its grand birds-eye view from the top of one of our oak trees and captured something in our yard over the weekend. My son and I watched it spread its wings and strut about with its feathers puffed as if pleased by its catch, then fly off back to its high perch to eat in peace.We have no idea what it had caught, much to my son’s disappointment and my squeamish stomach’s delight. We don’t have the 1 million per mm photoreceptors that the hawk does. Nor can we distinguish between wide arrays of colors the way a hawk can. We also lack the indented fovea which acts like a zoom lens and allows the hawk to hone in on its subject.Compared to the hawk, our eyesight is sorely lacking, we’re like blind moles fumbling our way around in the dark. Life can seem like that to us. Our problems seem overwhelming, insurmountable. We feel like the poor field mouse or the tiny rabbit vulnerable to an attack at any moment.I can imagine Joshua and his small army felt exposed and defenseless as they silently circled the wall of Jericho. Yet, Joshua’s small army crumbled those walls with only the blaring of their trumpets and the shouts of their voices (Joshua 6:1-21). Within the Bible, we even more examples of the weak underdog doing the impossible. Gideon, who claimed to be the least in his father’s house, sent home ten thousand soldiers at God’s command and battled the fierce and vast Midianite army with a mere three hundred men (Judges chapters 6 & 7). Elisha’s servant woke up and went outside to stretch one morning and found the city surrounded by the Aramean army. Instead of panicking, Elisha (and I believe he smiled as he did this) asked God to open his servant’s eyes, and God revealed a heavenly army filling the hills with chariots of fire (2 Kings 6:8-22).With God all things are possible. So why do we act like frightened field mice when we have access to hawk vision. We need to take a step back and get a better perspective. I don’t mean climb up an oak tree or scale building to the rooftop. I mean to get a God perspective. Joshua, Gideon, and Elisha overlooked their smallness to focus on God’s greatness. They realized what Paul later explained in Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”As Christ-followers, we have a direct line to God’s omnipotent power. Prayer connects us to the one who created the heavens and breathed the earth into existence. But, we need to stop holding a field mouse mentality, and in faith, turn to the One who is so big, the earth is His footstool. We need to realize that God is bigger than our circumstances. For He is the God of miracles.“Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9Don't miss a post! Sign up for my e-newsletter here: Lorri's Newsletter