The Bigger Story: Seeing Christ Clearly

In those Dark Ages before smartphones, streaming, and DVDs, there was VHS, which is what I grew up with. Whenever I wanted to watch my favorite movies, I would pop the VHS (video home system) tape into the VCR (video cassette recorder).

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While I may be nostalgic about VHS now, I would always dread when the tape would start to skip and the movie would blur into staticky incoherence. When that happened, it was my signal to clean the VCR. This whole process reminds me of spending time with Jesus in prayer.

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Prayer helps to clear our minds. When there’s a sense of spiritual blurriness or fuzziness surfacing inside, and we’re unsure of how to go forward, it’s time to pray. Much like how I would clean my VCR to see my movies more clearly, prayer can clear our minds so we can focus on what God is telling us. If the static of life is deafening, we can hone in on the quiet sanctuary of prayer within, listening to what God wants us to know about His love in this present moment.

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Then, once our minds have cleared and the static has been wiped away, we can start seeing the bigger picture instead of just focusing on what is stressing us in the current moment. Prayer helps us clear out the static so we can see the story of Christand our place in that storykind of like a movie. We can watch the progression from His birth to His death, and then the high point of His resurrection. And we can realize that there is no ending to Jesus’s storythe story continues as Jesus lives in each of us through the Holy Spirit. By remembering this big story and our place in it, we can see how Jesus is at work even in the midst of our stresses and worries.

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There is more to this part of life we find ourselves in than what we see at first. Prayer helps us see that more clearly, allowing us to shine Christ’s love into this fuzzy, staticky world. Kathryn Sadakierski

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How could seeing our place in the big picture of God’s story help us understand the details of our lives more clearly?

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In many psalms (which are prayers or songs to God), the psalmists remind themselves and each other of the great things God has done and the bigger story they are a part of (Psalms 71, 81, 105). How might it be helpful to follow the model of these psalms in our own prayers?

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Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving. Colossians 4:2 (CSB)

Read Verses:

Philippians 4:4-Philippians 4:9; Colossians 4:2; Psalm 32:6-Psalm 32:11; Psalm 46