A Tiny Piece of Sand

Have you ever noticed how a tiny piece of sand or an eensy bit of a stone can start to feel huge when it gets caught inside your shoe? Once it catches your attention, it pulls your focus in close. At times, the focus gets drawn in some so closely that the bit of sand is all we can see. Everything we perceive is seen through that particular lens. It’s a natural thing to happen.

Over the last several weeks, it was really hard to keep my focus from being fixed on a “little bit of sand.” After surgery in July, a complication arose that finally took a second surgery to correct. I am just now beginning to see my way clear past the recovery phase.

Even while we were with family in Texas, I had to work hard to keep this problem from consuming all my focus. I was able to enjoy being with family, but all the time the bit of sand stayed at least at the corner of my awareness.

How often, in our lives, does our attention get drawn away from what is most important and ends up being fixed on our discomfort? We may even begin to wonder how others could not be aware of this bit of sand. Surely they must see how large it looms, and yet they truly seem unaware. For me, it reminds me to have perspective on my own life; it also reminds me that I too am unaware of what is happening in the life of someone else. As God’s grace is sufficient for me, let me also offer it to others.

2 Corinthians 12:7b-9a

Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”