Known By Dick And Ruth FothSample

The Grand Design

Consider how young children often greet a parent as Mom or Dad walks through the door after work. I like to call it a Grand Design move. And I remember it well from when my own kids were little. When I stepped through the door after a long day of work, my three-year-old daughter, Jenny, would run to me, eyes sparkling and with a winning smile. Then she made her move. Arms high over her head, she hollered: “Up, Daddy!” I dropped what I was holding and reached for her. A dad never forgets the feel of a moment like that, the spontaneous closeness.

If I feel this way as an earthly father, how much more must our Heavenly Father revel in that move and that cry: “Up, Daddy!” We are designed for the move. As we look up to God, it naturally leads to looking over at each other. But we need to get that first part right. C. S. Lewis portrayed fallen man as “bent.” That is, he is looking down and, therefore, can’t get life right.

In The Healing Presence, Leanne Payne writes, “The unfallen position was, as it were, a vertical one, one of standing erect, face turned upward to God in a listening-speaking relationship. It was a position of receiving continually one's true identity from God.”

To follow that metaphor, when we look down, we totally miss what we are designed for. It strikes me as ironic that we live in a time called the Digital Age—an age defined by looking down. Hundreds of millions of us all over the world, looking down. (Says he, as he sits hunched over his laptop typing away, looking down!)

But when we look to God, we begin to recognize that His true design is for us to look first to Him and then toward one another. Life can corrode connectors and deplete energy, but the imprint remains. Beneath your gifts, skills, and achievements is a Grand Design. And it is this: You are not created to be alone.

Why does looking toward God help us look toward each other?