feeling small

Sometimes I feel like I just need a different perspective. This is the view from my temporary bedroom the last 2 1/2 weeks (Tyler's bedroom). From the 22nd floor things just look a little different than from my bedroom window in my suburban neighborhood.

I'm looking ahead at some situations right now and I have that "I feel very small" feeling. I wonder if I can handle the newness of a situation, can I be the helper that I want to be? Will I be able to grasp the situation with a firm grip, or will it always feel so slippery and dangerous and just a bit 'breathtaking'? What WILL be around the next corner?

I have great admiration for the city planners for the Marina Bay area of Singapore. This has been in the works for over 30 years. I marvel at the foresight of planning everything from open green spaces to artwork to offices and restaurants and residential towers to the MRT stations. And the malls and the number of escalators. Not only is the city built tall, it goes deep, deep into the ground for underground malls and train stations. So many details to consider and people to plan for. And then that makes me think of Someone else with a plan for a city...and a plan for me.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me! you know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word in on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me be night," even the darkness is not dark to you; and the night is bright as the day, for the darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.