The Big Picture

If you were to talk to people who used to work for me, one recollection they may have was my repetition of sayings to stimulate a thought process.  For example, my mom used to often say to me, “If Johnny jumped off a cliff, would you jump off with him”. The point of her saying was to encourage me to think for myself and to not blindly follow someone.  Unfortunately, I heard this as a child from her a lot.

But back to my staff. One of the phrases I repeated over and over was to “look at the big picture.” My area estimated the impact of changes to the price of insurance.  We did this, mostly, by pulling what happened in the past and making assumptions on how it would work in the future.  “Looking at the big picture” was my way of encouraging people to first of all ask enough questions to really understand what the requestor was asking for an estimate of and second to understand all the people involved and what their impact to the process might be.

For example, when telehealth (the ability to have a doctor visit over your phone with your doctor from home), first came out, our sales department wanted us to price the impact of covering those visits. Because at the time, you had to physically go to the doctor to cover the visit through insurance.  There are many moving parts, but the end result was that we estimated a slight increase needed in the price of the insurance.  Of course, the sales department was skeptical, as well as upset.  We had to explain that the ease of having a doctor appointment from your home would increase the number of doctors appointment due to the convenience.  Additionally, doctors had been taking care of some needs via phone calls while not being able to charge for their time.  The ability to squeeze in a telehealth visit meant that now they could bill for those services increasing the number of billable services.  Sales wanted to make the insurance product new and improved and we told them that the price would have to go up to accommodate.

(I’d be remiss if I didn’t pause at this point and remind you that our job was to estimate the cost impact and not evaluate whether the insurance plan should cover something.  There is a difference between marketing and regulatory requirements determining what was covered by the plan and estimating the cost impact.  There may be a 1,000 good reasons to cover telehealth services even if it raised the price of the insurance plan.)

All this wording to get back to the big picture.  I was thinking about this as I read this:

“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”- Psalm 8:1-9 ESV

We see the glory of God in the sun rise and the landscape and an almost infinite number of examples in his creation.  It is hard for me to imagine a rationale human who looks at the splendor and magnificence of creation and doesn’t (or more likely refuses, but that is for another time) see a Creator. 

But the beauty of this psalm is the acknowledgment that God is above his creation.  Look at that first verse “You have set your glory above the heavens”.  The author acknowledges that God created the universe and everything in it and is intimately in control of absolutely everything for his glory. 

It’s like the realization that I might be the king of my house (I’m not but I like to pretend) but my house makes us two people of over 150,000 in the county and almost 3 million in the state and almost 340 million in the United States and over 8 billion people in the world.  When you start putting this in perspective, my kingship is minimal at best (and in my case, probably nonexistent to begin with).  But even with all this God knew me before I was born and his plan includes me for his glory.

That, my friends, is looking at the big picture.