We have all heard the saying that, “You are making a mountain out of a mole-hill.” Generally, this little
saying indicates that we are not seeing things in their proper perspective. From time to time we all need
to readjust our perspective on things. The problems and challenges that we are facing in our lives
sometimes seem to be so overwhelming and so important that we can think of nothing else and yet,
placed in the proper perspective we can see that they are nowhere near as large or as important as we
have made them out to be. It helps to put things into their proper perspective. The Book of Wisdom
gives us an interesting perspective on our lives and on God’s tender mercy. “Before the LORD the whole
universe is as a grain from a balance or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.” The
universe seems so vast and immeasurable until it is placed before God. Given this perspective our lives
are nothing more than a speck of microscopic dust upon a single kernel of grain from a balance and our
problems are less than that. Can our little problems of suffering mean anything to God? Yet the Wisdom
writer goes on to tell us, “But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things.” In the greater
scheme of things in eternity we are as nothing before the LORD, yet the LORD loves us and preserves us
in being.
Isaiah the prophet spoke to us about the tenderness of God’s love for us, like the love of a mother for
the child of her womb, whom she can never forget. The Wisdom writer gives us an assurance of God’s
great love for all created things. The Wisdom writer tells us, “For you love all things that are and loathe
nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing
remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all
things, because they are yours, O LORD and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things!”
Even when it seems to us that God has every right to be angry with us and that he has rejected us and
that he even hates us, we see in his Word that he would never forget us, forsake us or hate us. God is
not a hater, he is a great “lover of souls” and of all things great and small.
Julian of Norwich had a vision or “showing” of this great mystery once and she describes it: “And in
this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I
perceived that it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought: What can this be? And I was given
this general answer: It is everything which is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that it
was so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and
always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God. In this little
thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that he loves it, the third is that
God preserves it.” St. Elizabeth of the Trinity also has an experience of perspective in our relationship
with God, “Deep calls unto deep. It is there in the very depths that the divine impact takes place, where
the abyss of our nothingness encounters the abyss of mercy, the immensity of the all of God. There we
will find the strength to die to ourselves and, losing all vestige of self, we will be changed into love.”
In the gospel of Luke, Zacchaeus, who thinks himself to be a big man, realizes his infinite smallness in
the light of his encounter with Jesus. He is made aware of his infinite smallness but at the same time
encounters the infinite mercy of God in Jesus. This changes Zacchaeus and he becomes a different
person with a new perspective on life able to do great things with the blessings that God has bestowed
upon him. We may be a small person like Zacchaeus, aware of the abyss of nothingness that
characterizes our life, but we are able to do great things in light of the abyss of God’s infinite mercy and
love. We need to allow Christ to remove whatever obstacle that separates us from God and allow
ourselves to be changed into love. Big problems become little things in the merciful hands of God who is
a lover of souls.