Summer's Perspective

My perspective is always so much better in summer. As I walk along the greenway, the Colorado fresh air is—refreshing. The mountains on the west side grow and diminish, depending on the angle from which I’m looking. The gazillion or so songbirds in their morning joy serenade the ear, and I wonder why anyone would ever walk with headphones on. Really!

I’m not an artist, but I have learned enough to know that in visual art, one must consider perspective. But, I understand perspective best in story. We call it point of view, and it’s far more significant than the typical student label: “It’s first person observer narrator, I think?”

Maybe the reason I like story is because we’re all characters in one—THE one.

God is writing a story that is beyond the movie screen or a hologram; it’s real and what happens in this plot and to these centuries of characters really matter. It’s an interesting structure in which God is the all-knowing omniscient narrator, and we’re each a participating first person narrator. We mainly only see this story, this history, through our own eyes.

Point of view is significant in story because it helps to reveal the author’s tone—or attitude. And I guess that is the point of the point of view—my attitude, and God’s.

My attitude can be as rolling as the Tennessee hills. In summer I listen to songbirds, have a decently clean house, and joy is often in my grasp. I love the cool nights, the sun on my face, and time to think, to love, to do. The dark, wintry season of grading research papers? —not so much.

Yet, God’s perspective never changes. He’s the same as He’s always been and always will be—the ever-present omniscient narrator and author of life. His perspective is written in the Bible. The more I see His perspective, the more it’ll affect mine and stable my attitude.

This summer I want to spend more time there. Let’s spend more time there. Let’s imbibe the spiritual summer because the dark, cold winter is sure to wrap itself back around—bringing those research papers with it, I’m afraid.