You Can Look at it Two Ways

 Nearly 40years ago I started to speak on various topics related to addiction. Two stories that I frequently used were always powerful, simple yet powerful. Today they are often repeated but they still convey the concepts that are often more than one way to look at your circumstances.

Example #1

You can look at things in two ways. It can depend on your perspective. Consider the little boy who kept throwing the baseball up to himself to hit it. Swing after swing he kept missing the ball and missing the ball. He just could not hit the ball. An observer saw his struggle swinging and missing every time he threw the ball up. So, the man started to feel bad for the boy and thought the little tyke would get frustrated. He went up to the boy and said you are having a really hard time hitting the ball. The boy replied that it was not bad hitting at all, didn’t you see that great pitching.

You can look at the same issue or the same event from more than one perspective. When God instituted the Passover, I could just imagine some animal rights activists protesting how cruel it is for the lambs to shed their blood and then to put the blood on the door post. On the other hand, I can see parents feeling totally blessed by God when their child was spared and passed over because of that blood. The Passover is an event that could be looked at from more than one perspective. But this event serves as a beautiful illustration of the redemption Christ accomplished at Calvary.

Sometimes, the Lord permits things in our lives that to our eyes might look like it is a bad thing or that it doesn’t make sense. There is generally a positive way to look at things in your life and a negative way. When you focus on the issue at hand from the Lord’s perspective you will see that it may not be that you can’t hit, it just might be the pitching. Stuff happens in life on a daily basis, as it does always look at it from the other perspective, God’s.

Example #2

There was a story about an old man walking along the beach, the Jersey Shore, after a rather intense storm. There was a lot of things washed up onto the shore. As a matter of fact, there were literally thousands of starfish stranded. The old man would bend over pick on up and through back into the ocean. After a while a couple of teenage boys saw it and began to ridicule the old man saying that he was wasting his time there were too many and that it did not matter. The old man continued to pick up one star fish after another and turned to the boys and said it mattered a lot to that one.

Sometimes when we have the opportunity to help someone or witness to someone, the feeling develops that it doesn’t matter. It won’t have any positive effect.

Sometimes we may get weary trying to do the next right thing. We don’t see the immediate effects of our efforts so it can lead to a restricted view. While your efforts may not lead to mass revival it will open the door to help that one.

In His name, Bro. Bo