Recently I was listening to an audiobook entitled “Beautiful Outlaw.” In this book John Eldredge relates a parable of the way we can develop tunnel-vision about our life, circumstances, God, and relationships.

“One day a man decided to board himself up inside his house. He sealed off the doors, the windows, even the chimney.  He left only one opening – the kitchen window – through which anyone who wished to speak to him was forced to speak.  Fortunately, there were people that still wished to speak to him, so they called on the man at his kitchen window.

Over the years this fellow came to the conclusion that the world was such a place in which people only speak to one another through kitchen windows.  He wrote a book in which he argued that human discourse cannot and does not take place in any other way than through kitchen windows.

The Kitchen Window School was founded shortly after his death. Our experience of God is limited most often by the limits we put on him!”

Do we put limits on relationships? Circumstances? When we only consider certain events, words, and actions from our limited perspective, we only confirm our bias.  

While we may have examples of people that think everything is great all the time, all too often this works in a negative way – when we only see the negative, resulting in a negative outlook and perception of things.  We must make a concerted effort to see things for what they are, not just through a narrow lens of our self-made perspective.

Don’t just live life through the kitchen window!