Tag Archives: perspective

Her story…

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I told you a few weeks ago about my newly found love for Mary.  I have been thinking about her a lot and wanting to know her more and know her story.

Tonight as I was conquering the mountain of laundry that has piled up since school let out for summer, I decided to watch the first part of a movie that has been sitting in my queue for a while, Mary of Nazareth.

First of all, let me tell you that I love it and I will be watching the second part very soon.

While watching it I realized that maybe we can know more of her story through His stories, by looking deeper into the parables of The Gospel, and then imagining how these parables might translate into her life, her childhood, her memories and her thoughts that she shared with her sweet and blessed son, Jesus.

Imagine for a moment Mary’s wedding celebration.  I had never done this before, but it was vividly depicted in this movie.  Her parents prepared a feast to celebrate their daughter’s wedding, but no guests came.  Their neighbors looked on with disgusted judgement refusing to attend while Mary, Joseph and her parents sat alone.

Now imagine what might have happened next.

What if Mary stood up, reached for Joseph’s hand and together they walked through the village inviting everyone they found to join them in celebration?

Does this sound familiar?  Check out Matthew 22 and Luke 14:15-24.

Maybe some of her story is buried deep His parables.  Maybe we just have to read The Gospels again from yet another perspective to find her story.

I think it is time to start digging deep again my friends!

Warriors of Love!

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I heard the song His Kind of Love by Group 1 Crew today on KSBJ in Houston (my favorite station)!  I am sure I have heard it many times, but I was planning to run today and the great beat struck me.  I drove home from dropping the girls off, bought it for my i-pod, put it on repeat, and ran out the door.

The song got me really pumped up for a run, and as I running I was really listening to the words and feeling His love, praying for understanding His love, and wanting to share His love.  I made it home and as I was stepping into the house I was listening to the line in the song, “Is reckless for us” and do you know who I thought of?  I thought of women in abusive relationships and marriages.

I thought to myself these women understand reckless love.  They stay with their partner or husband through the beatings, through the verbal abuse, through the humiliation.  They love their partners and they wait out the bad times and hope for the good times to return. They haven’t forgotten the glimmer of Jesus that they saw in their spouses eyes when they first met and they probably see Jesus again every morning after the storm in the apologies, hugs, kisses and promises that it will never happen again.  They lose friends and family who don’t understand why they won’t leave.  In the end others give up on them or even start to hate them for their weakness for staying… just as Jesus was despised by so many.  The bruises, scars, and pain are their battles wounds showing us that they know a lot about loving as Jesus loves.  They know about Reckless Love.

I am in no way suggesting these women stay in these relationships or continue to put up with abuse. I don’t want that for them or anyone!

However since realizing this, I will never again look upon these women with pity.  I will see them as Warriors of Love!  I will want to kiss their battle wounds and pray for a quick recovery.  I will want to ask how to help them and not take the assumption that I know how to help them.  I will want to thank them for showing me that it is possible in our world to love recklessly as Jesus loves us.  I will want to ask them how they do it (not as a put down or to embarrass them, but as a student would ask a teacher)  so that I can humbly try to spread the love that they are spreading through this one lost individual that they have been appointed to care for, teach and love!

Jesus please help us to love as these women love and help us to change our perspective and see these women as You want them to be seen, as Your Warriors of Love!

Free will…

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I have had three discussions about our free will over the last three months that have stuck with me.  Then last night I was watching the documentary The Human Experience and I saw the following quote.

“The last of the human freedom’s is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”
– Viktor E. Frankl

As soon as I saw this quote I immediately thought that this seems not only to be the last of our freedoms, but also the first and original freedom we were given when God gave us our free will.

Until recently I have limited my thoughts of our free will to only our physical actions. When I think of free will only in relation to my physical actions such as taking the stairs vs. the elevator or going to work vs. staying home or doing something wrong vs. doing something right, then I become quite confused because if God gave me free will, but knows what I will choose to do and can bring about events that will cause me to make a different choice then my free will seems limited.  Please don’t misunderstand me though. I am not saying that this limitation means our physical actions have no bearing or carry no weight.  I believe God still wants us to do the right thing.  I believe He still wants us to be generous rather than selfish, He wants us to not steal, He wants us to not kill, He wants us to love others, but we can’t forgot that God is bigger than we can imagine.  God can take any bad physical action we make and combine it with other actions to make it good in the end.

Isn’t this what he did through Jesus’ death and resurrection?  God took the worst imaginable physical action (us killing His son Jesus) and turned it into good (resurrecting His son Jesus).  By combining these, Jesus’ death becomes good because without it He could not have been resurrected.

Now, if I change my perspective of free will and look at it as my freedom to choose how I perceive things or to choose my attitude as Viktor Frankl put it in his quote above, then the limitations I spoke of disappear.

God can give me a sunny day, but it is up to me to enjoy the sun or complain about the heat.  God can give me a rainy day, but again it is my choice to complain about the rain or to instead look for a rainbow.

He completely relinquished control of our consciousness through free will giving us complete freedom to perceive the world as we wish.  This doesn’t mean that God will ever stop trying to convince us to perceive good in all things, but he literally cannot make us see the good in all things.  He is limited to trying to convince us that all things are good through combining bad actions with others to make them good in the end and through showering us with grace and inspiration which we have the choice to accept or decline.

It is completely up to us to see the good, but what happens when and if we do perceive the good in everything?

I think we will have found our own unique perspective of the good in everything which will mean that we have also surrendered to God’s will because God’s will is Good!!!

Therefore I think we will have found God’s peace!!!

God thank you for loving us so much that you gave us free will.  Please help me to use my free will to find the good in everything and therefore surrender to Your will!

I want to stand for good… it is everywhere even if we don’t think we can see it, it is hidden from view, but it is there!

I want to stand for Jesus… he is Good, Oh so Good!!!

Perspective shift

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We went to the park the other day to take a short hike with the girls. As we were all getting out of the car and unfolding the stroller a woman was walking by with two small dogs. I was just about to look up and say hello when she dropped her wallet and said in a very angry and exasperated voice to herself, “This has been the worst f*****g day, can anything else go wrong?” She picked up her wallet and stomped past us through the parking lot. It was only 10:30 am, and I thought to myself, unfortunately she still has most of the day left for things to continue spiraling out of control. Obviously I only saw one moment of her story and it appeared to be a very bad moment, but it made me think about perspective and if a perspective shift could have helped her through the rest of the day.

Perspective is defined as a mental view of or outlook on a situation.  I think a perspective shift can change almost anything.  When I don’t know someone else’s full story it is difficult to suggest a perspective shift, but hopefully a personal story will help make my point.

A few weeks ago I was out on a Sunday evening on my way to return a movie. I turned onto the highway feeder road a little too quickly and hit the curb with my rear tire. The tire immediately blew and luckily I was just about 200 yards from an open gas station. As I was pulling in to see if they could help me change my tire I was thinking, It serves me right because I made the turn too quickly, as if this was punishment for my poor driving. A really nice young man changed my tire and I was on my way.  The next day I went to buy a new tire and the man at the store strongly suggested replacing the other three as well.   I took a look at the tires and if you know about the penny test to check the treads then you will understand how necessary it was for me to get new tires when I tell you that there was nowhere to even put the penny.  As I was pulling away with four new tires I could have been complaining about the hour I had just spent waiting for new tires or the money I had just spent that I had planned to use for something else, but instead I thought to myself, Thank you God for making me get new tires since I wasn’t going to find the time to do it without your help.

Despite some of the terrible things I see in the news, I try to keep my perspective shifted  and continue to believe it is Our Best Life and I hope you do too?  If we all believe it is our best life would the news change?

Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”