You may be surprised to hear that I don’t rescue babies every day.  It was just the one time at the zoo. My wife and I were on our way in from the parking lot when I spotted a lady tapping on her car window.  She was talking to someone inside and looked desperate, so I stopped to help.

It turns out she was a babysitter.  And where was the baby?  Sitting in her carseat inside the locked car with the engine running.  Munching on Cheerios.

I’m guessing later in the morning the babysitter was planning on giving the kid some lead paint and letting her run with scissors.  Throw in some candy from strangers and she would have a lock on the “Worst Babysitter of All Time” award.  Not exactly Mary Poppins.

But at least she had a plan.  She was trying to get the kid to unlock the door.  “Come on honey,” she said.  “You can do it.  Just pull it up.”  Unfortunately the baby couldn’t have been more than 16 months old and, even though she wasn’t strapped in her carseat, she didn’t look like she had a lot of experience with manual locks.

Needless to say, by the time I arrived on the scene, the babysitter was on the verge of totally freaking out.  She’d tried all the doors and windows.  She’d tried the baby whisperer bit.  But she was stuck.

That’s where I came in.  Now, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I have to admit, I am more observant than most.  You might think of me as kind of an American Sherlock Holmes.  That’s why it only took me a couple of seconds to notice the trunk was open.  The babysitter had been putting a stroller in the trunk when she’d locked herself out.

“How about I go in through the back seat?” I asked.  You would have thought I’d told her men from Mars had landed.  She was so panicked that it hadn’t even occurred to her.

Within a couple of minutes I’d climbed through the trunk into the back seat and popped the lock.  When I poked my head into the car, the baby waved her Cheerios at me and giggled.  Apparently she’d never seen that trick before.

Sometimes in life we find ourselves stuck in a jam that looks like there’s no way out.  No options.  No escape hatch.  No hope at all.  Or at least, that’s how it appears.  Why?  Because, like my babysitting friend, we panic.  We’re too close to the situation.  We magnify the problem and catastrophize all possible outcomes.

It’s in times like these that we need a different perspective.  We need someone who can see our situation objectively.  We need the eyes of heaven.

For you that might mean getting some godly perspective from the Bible.  It might just mean bringing a wise friend into the mix.  Or even a dumb friend.  I didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to point out the obvious to the babysitter.  Maybe that’s all you need too.

Other times you may just need to step back, take a breath and pray.  When you do that, you give God the chance to show you the open trunk.  Trust me.  It’s there.  You just may need a little help to see it.

Image: ‘Spare‘ http://www.flickr.com/photos/7666975@N03/6076778000