I came up the street behind them, two young women with a very small toddler between them. They were responsible adults, holding her hands firmly so that they did not lose her on the streets of New York. She was adorable in her pink and purple striped tights that emphasized her little legs. The adults had carefully adjusted their pace to her much slower one in her minute pink sneakers.

So why did I notice them? Because the adults were missing it all, that's why. Since she was so much tinier, her eye level was on things of which her companions were totally oblivious as they chatted away, above her head.

Her eye was attracted to the man drinking coffee on the doorstep of the building undergoing renovation, to the two workmen piling their equipment onto a scaffold about to leave street level, to the passing jeans wears whose artful hole in the knee was exactly at her eye level.

It was intriguing to me. She was so observant, turning her head to check back on what she had passed, missing nothing while her "big people" missed everything as they talked on. It gave me pause for thought. We see most things on eye level or at least not too far above or below. As the little striped legs disappeared when they turned a corner, she stayed in my mind's eye. How much of the street had I missed before I had caught up with my new guide? And how skewed is my perspective because of my eye level?

I recalled the tourists I had come up behind a few years ago, clutching their guide book as they stood beneath the Empire State Building. She was saying to him, plaintively: "It should be right here." As I passed, I murmured aloud: "Look up." Startled, she did just that and gasped. There it was—all of it.

I wonder sometimes if God doesn't feel like that about me. What do I miss as I pass through life, forgetting to look up or down for the bigger picture? In my heart I thanked my miniature guide for reminding me of possibility.