Have you ever been driving down the highway and you see smoke off in the countryside? You try to guess the location of the fire and are sure it's on the right side of the road only to go a bit further and realize as the road wound around, the fire was obviously on the left? As you get closer you continue to guess the location only to be wrong again, changing your mind as the road changes directions?
How about this: If a woman loses weight and goes from say a size 22 down to a size 14, she's quite slim and everyone tells her so. But if she were a size 4 and gained weight to be a size 14, she's probably heading to Weight Watchers.
How many issues in our lives are just like that? Our perspectives are skewed. We think we know the truth, but we're deceived, tricked, or simply have tunnel vision.
Once a year, Shane and I attend our Pregnancy Resource Center's fundraising Gala. The month or so before the Gala, we all meet in some one's very nice home for a prayer dessert. Last year we met in a real live mansion. Coming home to a humble abode is a little depressing after a night like that. I could start to believe all kinds of detrimental things such as I deserve a better house, that we need more income to live a higher class lifestyle, that we shouldn't be attending fancy smancy functions because we're too ordinary...and so on. Since I have friends who've seen first hand how some people in Africa and Mexico live, I can instead be thankful that I don't huddle my family under a lean-to next to the dump where we salvage scraps for food. I can even look around my own town and find many people who don't live as comfortably as we do. The key is perspective.
What do you believe about your Bible? About being persecuted? About tolerance? About stuff? Do we even know what it's like to hide a page ripped out of a Bible like it's a sacred text we may never get a chance see again? Do we really think the coworker teasing us for getting out of work on time on Wednesday evenings for church is persecution?
I have been challenged often in the last few years to take a step back and check my perspective. Let's walk in truth together as we evaluate issues in our lives that might need attention-or even less attention. This is the only way to live-with honesty and contentment.
1 comment:
So true! So often we find ourselves coveting - the neighbor's new car, our co-worker's new house, a stranger's pair of shoes . . . Most of the time we don't even know we are doing it.
I have to remind myself daily that "at least I have a roof over my head" and "at least God is providing what I need to survive".
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