Perspective

Perspective is an interesting thing.  It is not something that is a fact, but it is an opinion.  Often your perspective is based on your upbringing, your environment, your experiences, and your current situation.  Are you a person who sees the glass half full or half empty?

One person might look at a situation and have a positive perspective on it, but someone else might look at that exact same thing and see a negative perspective.  Which is correct? 

Well neither is!  Because it is your opinion or point of view.  And that perspective is formed as you grow and as you live through different experiences.  Often your perspective ends up being very predictable based on how you have reacted in the past.  Sometimes that is a good thing, and sometimes it might be time to change that perspective. 

This morning I was awoken by the sound of these large trucks on my street.  They were so loud!  And it wasn’t one truck, but many trucks.  Turned out they were going to be repaving my neighborhood.  And they arrived at 6am!  Normally I am up by 5am but of course today of all days I was going to sleep late.  At least till they showed up. 

I got up grumpy because it was so loud as they began that repaving process.  I was angry and frustrated at that noise and inconvenience.  And then my almost 2 year old grandson woke up.  He came downstairs and looked out the door at those big trucks and started smiling the biggest smile I’d ever seen!  He was so thrilled at getting to watch those gigantic trucks go back and forth right in front of the door!  His absolute favorite toy is trucks - and here he was seeing them live and in person! 

Perspective. 

Exact same situation - one person is angry over it and one is happy over it. 

This is how we can approach life too.  We can get angry when bad things happen, angry when we get sick, angry when things do not turn out the way we wanted.  Or we can see life through God’s perspective.  We can turn to Him instead.  We can pray more, read our Bible more, feel the Holy Spirit beside us more. We can anticipate a better future.  We can ask God what we can learn from that situation.  We can be glad things do not turn out the way we want because we know they are turning out the way God wanted. 

We can have a heavenly perspective and not an earthly one. 

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  2 Corinthians 4:17-18