40 Ways My Labyrinth is Like My Life--#38

38. Heaven can see all of it, all the time.


Throughout these weeks of Lent, one of the continuing themes has been the confusion that can occur when the path seems to lead in directions you wouldn't expect. You can sometimes see the center, but not the path, or see the path, but not the center. Many labyrinths are flat, made on stone or concrete, and a walker can see all of them at once from anywhere on the path. Mine is flat, too, and now, while the trees and vines are young, you can see most of it. But as it grows, that will be less possible.

In life, however, you can never see more than about three steps back and one or two forward. Sometimes it's hard to see your own toes! Don't you wish you could rise up to about treetop level and look down on the whole pattern of your life? Even if you still couldn't see the future, it would be nice to find out if there was some semblance of a pattern in what has already taken place. Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe we still couldn't recognize the pattern even if we could see it. The problem is, the path is years long (sometimes many fewer years than we wish, sometimes many more. . .) and on top of that, there's this unbelievable jumble of paths overlooking and intersecting each other. Every person in your life, from the waitress you met once to your parents and spouse and closest friends, whose lives have intertwined with yours (and yours with theirs) for decades, has a pattern all his or her own. Who could possibly make sense of the fractals and Golden Sections and spooky quantum physical weirdness that results from all that?

God can, that's who. Only God. Heaven sees my labyrinth, and yours, and hers and his and theirs. The rain falls and the sun shines and there are droughts and feasts and famines and epidemics and lush bounty and blessings beyond the possibility of numbering. And that's enough.