Choose the Sky

I don’t pretend to be a good writer, who can touch the hearts of many, but I hope by sharing this moment that touched me, it will in turn encourage you. Not ten minutes ago I was exiting my music class after receiving a low grade on my midterm, which was supposed to be and was extremely easy. After a rough night the day before and a busy morning filled with anything but my priority- school I was, needless to say, down about life and my confidence was in a sharp plummet aimed at the ground. My head was down and I was deep in thought, I raised my eyes just enough to take note of the people walking past me. They too expressed the same furrows on their brow and their eyes wore dark bags indicative of little sleep. I felt surrounded, drowned in a petri dish of unhappiness, worry, stress, and hopelessness that seemed to be this university at times.

That’s when the words from Wednesday night prayer came back to me. We had reflected on the crippled woman from the bible. Her only view was the ground she walked on, something at which I was currently choosing to look. As I trudged to my next class, I watched the

raindrops hit the ground and sink in, my thoughts already starting to become preoccupied with the upcoming test in which I NEEDED to do well.

I brought myself back to night prayer where we have been following along with Emily Wilson's "I Choose the Sky: A Scriptural Devotional for Women." When Jesus healed the woman, He gave her a choice with which she was not previously presented. He gave her the option to look anywhere she pleased and she chose the sky as opposed to the ground. So I looked up and made the same choice, knowing that is where God wanted me to look. The slate grey was made even more beautiful by the crystals of rain that caught the little light peeking out of the clouds, glistening as they came down. I smiled. I chose the sky, a simple and easy choice to tilt my head upwards instead of letting it hang and drag my mood down. As I entered the building where my next class was the security guard sitting there waved me over and said, “You have a beautiful smile. Don’t stop smiling. When you smile your days seems shorter.”

God offered me a choice. The smallest and seemingly insignificant of all the choices I had to make that day and yet, it was the one decision that made the biggest difference. Choose good, choose the sky, for it makes all the difference.