Macro

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. (James 4:8)

Whenever I go for a walk, something happens in my brain. My focus sharpens, and my eyes become attentive to whatever small thing--a flower, an insect, a mushroom--might warrant my attention (and my camera lens). I've been known to miss expansive mountain views on my left because I was stooping over an interesting bit of reindeer lichen on my right.

It's as if my mind switches to macro-lens mode. I'm looking for what is small, what is seemingly insignificant, what might be missed by someone who is not looking so closely. And when I find something, it's a joyful little discovery.

It's easy to fall into the thinking that God is focused on the big picture--the mountain views, the vast continents, the whole world, the stars, the heavens. Or he's focused on swaths of human activity--genocide in Africa, slavery in China, social unrest here in the U.S. Or natural activity--forest fires, climate change, hurricanes and floods.

It's hard sometimes to think that he has time to stop and focus on the smallest flower, the bit of reindeer lichen on the rock.

But he created those things. He knows they're there. And if you look at the intricacy of even the simplest flower, you can see the Artist's hand.

And he created us. He sees this teeming mass of humanity as a whole, sure, but he also sees the individual who suffers, the mother who lost her baby, the child who struggles daily with issues of identity and independence. He sees the man who struggles under injustice and intolerance, the teen who feels like suicide is the only way out of the pain.

The Bible promises us that if we draw near to God, he will draw near to us. And he isn't limited by time or space as we are; even as he is aware of all the suffering in the world, he also will draw near to us in our individual, secret, lonely pain. When we draw near to him--through prayer and repentance, through studying and submitting to his word, through community with other followers of Christ, and perhaps even through a quiet walk in his creation--we will come to know more intimately his everlasting presence and comfort.