It is 140am and I have decided to write. I hear some rain outside. It is the second morning of Ramadan here in Trinidad. It is Friday. Life is beautiful. This does not mean it is perfect or without problems but it means we choose to see the beauty despite it all. I have been exercising and eating healthier since the beginning of the year. I want to become fit and strong. I saw something on fb and it has me thinking. It says, God is bigger than all our problems. But what does this mean? Is this another way of saying God can fix all things? All things are in God's hands? Let go and let God?
My friend Chatty tells me that when someone says "God is bigger than your problems" they are usually saying that your perspective is currently limited, but God's is not. Imagine you are an ant on a beautiful Persian rug. You might be standing on a patch of dark, messy-looking thread and think, "This rug is ugly and dark." But God is the weaver looking at the whole rug from above, seeing how that dark thread is necessary to make the gold pattern pop. I get it. It is about seeing the bigger picture and putting things into perspective. It is about focusing on what truly matters. It is about the strength to overcome through God. Again, life is beautiful after all.
"God is bigger" is not a magic trick to make the dark threads disappear; it is the assurance that the dark threads are not a mistake. In my journey to become fit and strong, I will have days where my body ache or my energy is low or my motivation is lacking. In those moments, I am standing on a "dark thread." But when I zoom out, I see that the ache is actually the strength building. The discipline is the "gold" being woven into my character. I just noticed that "God is bigger" said in reverse is "Bigger is God" which forms the acronym BIG. How poetic. I went looking to see if Gib is an Arabic word and I found Ghayb that ties in nicely with all of this and it starts with G and ends with b also and may be pronounced Gib in some dialects.
In Islam, Ghayb represents the "Unseen"—the vast, divine reality that remains hidden from our limited human perception. This concept perfectly completes my BIG philosophy: while we struggle with the "dark threads" of our daily problems, we are called to have faith in the beauty of the pattern we cannot yet see. By recognizing that Bigger Is God, I am choosing to trust the Weaver of the Ghayb, finding the strength to stay disciplined in my fitness and faith journey (I like how the word fit is contained in the word faith) even when the ultimate "gold" (goal could work here also) of my transformation is still tucked away in the future. I see God in the word go-l-d. Which reminds me of something I came across yesterday, "People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for." Life is beautiful not because every thread shines, but because the Weaver does.
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