No - I am not referring to the song by the band The Killers. 😮 (Not that I know this song. I just looked it up because I thought I recognized this phrase. In fact, I have not listened to it and I cannot recommend it in any way. LOL)
I am currently reading Walking From East to West - God in the Shadows, the autobiography of the late great Ravi Zacharias. I am only a few chapters in, but it is apparent that Ravi looked back on his life and was able to identify specific people and events that God worked through in order to guide his life even as Ravi himself was not walking with God.
As a Christian, I believe God is always working in my life and in the lives of those around me even though we have all been given a free will to choose our thoughts and actions. It is an extremely complicated concept to think that God knows every single relationship and event in the world in minute detail. He is outside of time itself and knows ALL things. It is so easy to be blinded by the temporal physical world - and have trouble seeing around or through it. That is where the eternal and spiritual perspective lies. There was a time in my life when a mentor kept reminding me to keep an "eternal perspective", and I am so thankful for the advice. It is hard to remember, though, since my physical senses can only see, hear, feel, touch. and taste what is in the physical world.
I say all of that to say this: There is no way I could have foreseen the future in 2005. That is the year we started homeschooling our oldest child. What ideas would she and her brother have been exposed to if they had not been homeschooled? Besides the proactive approach we took in teaching them why they should believe what they believe, we also taught them to be good skeptics. A "good" skeptic gathers information and weighs the argument. This includes knowing a good argument versus a fallacious one. I have only recently been made aware of ideas being taught and promoted in our country's school system; ideas like Critical Race Theory, trans gender identity "options", and the 1619 Project, to name a few.
It is a scary thought to think that my children could be extremely different if they believed these ideas were true - and good. In fact, they could have ended up believing there was no such thing as absolute truth or that their Christian faith was an oppressive Western idea that is not really "loving" or "tolerant". (Linguistic theft is a very effective way of making people question everything they thought they knew. Listen here for a great explanation : Mama Bear Apologetics podcast #54)
There is so much more I could go into about these ideas, but the more I learn about them the more and more thankful I am that we homeschooled - and still do. (I highly recommend Mama Bear Apologetics by Hillary Morgan Ferrer to learn more.) It reminds me that God is in the shadows and he is watching over us. We trusted Him when we felt the urge to homeschool, but had little to no knowledge on how to do so. Remembering to trust Him every step of the way has not always been easy. There is pressure and there are insecurities that rear their ugly heads all the time - just when you think, "I've got this." Ultimately, He has been taking care of us this whole time, and I obviously believe He will continue to do so.
An eternal perspective doesn't mean that we can see what God sees, it means we can trust that what He sees for us is the best for us.
Blessings,
Heidi
PS. I also recommend Natasha Crain's books on teaching your children to know why they believe what they believe about their Christian faith - because, as apologist Frank Turek always says, "Kids are talked out of it [Christianity] because they have never been talked into it." (One more book plug - I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Frank Turek)
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