There’s a wonderful picture book called Home (Jeanne Baker, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004). Its pages are all about one particular view: Tracy’s second floor window, looking onto her back yard and the neighborhood beyond. It begins with Tracy’s birth, showing a small section of her room and the world outside the window. Every year, the same view and a glimpse into the changes in Tracy’s life and world. A few crafts, cards, and toys on the inside, the evolving yard and neighborhood on the outside. The last picture shows Tracy and her parents sitting in their back yard – with her husband and baby. All of it seen from a single perspective: time moves forward, location stays the same. Neighborhood renewal, changing neighbors, growing children and aging parents – so much revealed through a single window.

That’s my life. It’s not the full story of humanity or the full view of creation. It’s a glimpse at it through a single perspective. Not the complete story, but a real story. Limited, but true. Part of the great, eternal, infinite, whole. And I love my glimpse, my limited part of an ongoing, eternal reality. Holy and limited until the walls dissolve into the eternal embrace of God.

For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

I Cor. 13:9-10