The Flashing Red Light

I have always loved living on the hill that my house is located on. It makes it difficult for friends to park sometimes, and people fly up and down the street like it's the Autobahn, but it's always made for a pretty fantastic view. We can see for days from up here, especially after the rain. What's with the rain making everything so much clearer? A parallel to the way Christ refines us through pain that draws us to him? I think so.

The ability to see so far away, drew my attention to a flashing red light at the beginning of high school. It sat far off in the distance, and I never really knew its location. It's a red light high up on a pole, and I sort of always assumed it was for low-flying airplanes that were coming in for landing at SFO. In fact, that theory may even be accurate. I just don't really know.

But the night that I found that flashing red light, was a night I was in huge trouble. Like, humongous trouble beyond what I am really willing to admit. Like, not allowed to leave the house for months except for school, trouble.  Like, trouble that led to me having little more to do than stare out across the city of San Mateo and notice a small flashing red light.

I wasn't the best behaved high-schooler. It's fine.

I had hit a place where life was spinning so far out of my control, that God used a little red light to speak into a young heart that did not yet truly know Him.

That light made me feel small.

It calmed me.

It still calms me.

That light reminds me that there is greater purpose to this earth than what I could ever hope. It reminds me that the Lord has far greater things in store for me than I could arrange for myself.

Because even a small red light no more than ten miles from my home, does two things all at once. It makes me feel so very small, while reminding me that He reigns over each and every little thing.

Whether it's been a week or three months since I've been back home, that light still reminds me to calm down and know that He is greater.

I've stared at that light by myself, with my parents, with boyfriends, and with friends. I've stared at it from the living room window, from the deck, from across the street, from parked cars, and from the roof. I've stared at in each and every stage of life that the last eight years has brought to pass.

But I can never seem to find that little light on the horizon from any other vantage point but the one that comes with this property up on the hill.

Sometimes we have to remove ourselves, get higher, and dwell in the Almighty in order to get real perspective on this world and be shown just how intricately He has knit together His people and this planet.

We are His.

Hallelujah!