Angles to Angels

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…”  Hebrews 12:2 NIV

While walking the beach, stones and coral covered the sand and continued to wash up on the shore with each ocean wave that pounded the shoreline.  Depending on the angle I looked at these rocks, I could see different designs in the stones.  Some looked like animal shapes, some letters of the alphabet, and some just a glob of volcanic lava melted together.  I found a couple of heart shaped stones and two shaped like angels.  We even found rocks to spell out O-H-I-O.

I noticed that some people never looked down at the stones and therefore missed the angle of imagining the shapes.  Some people just watched the ocean and looked for whales.  Others just looked down at the rocks and never noticed the whales coming up to the surface.  Some never saw the mountains or the clouds or the beautiful sky because their angle was the beach and the stones.  It depends where one’s focus is and the angle of one’s gaze what you see and experience.

If I stood on the beach and looked one direction, I saw the mountains.  If I turned and looked another direction, I only saw the ocean.  If I turned halfway again, I saw the grass and villas.  It depended on my angle what I saw. An angle is a particular way of considering or approaching an issue, situation or scene.  It gives us different perspectives as we change angles.  It depends upon where we place our focus and our point of view.

How we see life depends on our heart, our perspective, our basic beliefs, and what we are looking for in life.  What we have experienced in our lives influences our perspective.  Each of us have a different angle in which we view life and interpret its meaning.

What are you searching for in life today?  It can be the search for the perfect gift, the most beautiful painting, the outfit that flatters, the food that tastes delicious, but none of these material possessions tend to satisfy for very long.  They do not bring a lasting peace and contentment to our hearts.  The pursuit of what is missing and what seems so allusive continues.  We may long for what we lost and wish we still had in life.

We may focus on the unfairness of life, the hurts, the losses, the brokenness and only see the pain and unfairness that life has offered us.  Our hearts may hurt and we view everything through this pain.  We cannot change the past nor what has happened, but it does not need to define who we are.  The past will always be a part of us, and it continues to influence us and be the reason we can learn and grow and change.  If our angle is only on the past and the hurt and pain, everything in life will feel empty and heavy and overwhelming because the past cannot be changed.  We will stay stuck in this perspective that life will always cause hurt and pain.

Just like the beach, I need to look at all the angles to see everything around me and realize life is filled with many different views and adventures.  I have to shift my focus and see the good that can come even out of the hurt and pain.  I need to look at all the angles in life.  Each angle has beauty.  It is incorporating all the angles into life to experience the depth and beauty and also the challenges.  All the angles enhance life and define us more completely.

I have a friend that always spells “angel” like “angle.”  So in pondering the angles of life, I realize if we would see the angles more like angels – messengers of God, the angles would be seen through God’s message.  That is, if we looked at every situation and realized God was giving us a message, we would be much more aware of God’s presence each moment.  We would see God in all the angles of life and look for the meaning and purpose of the angle.  Life would become seeking to find God in all the moments of life – in all the angles!