OnFire 343 I Shouldn't Have Looked So Hard

OnFire Letter

OnFire 343 I Shouldn’t  Have Looked So Hard

As I left the house one morning not long ago I looked up and noticed a particularly clear sky. I turned slowly to take in the beauty of the blueness surrounding me.

“Surely there must be a cloud somewhere,” I thought and I slowly scanned the sky again. To the south there was a bank of clouds, hardly noticeable because they were low on the horizon. Immediately I was disappointed because that one cloud seemed to take away from the grandness of the big blue sky, even though nothing really had changed. The sky was still pretty, and big, and blue, but now I was focused on the cloud. I shouldn’t have looked so hard.

It made me think of how we tend to focus on the negative so much more easily than the positive. A hundred things go right, but one goes wrong and that’s where our thoughts go.  We tend not to ponder the greatness of the good things in our lives, even when they are many. Rather, our thoughts tend to go toward the crappiness of the few, little things.  “I shouldn’t have looked so hard,” seems to fit here.

Amazingly, I can think of so many people I have known over the years who were content and happy despite the problems they faced in life.  We might judge their circumstances to be pretty miserable because of hardship or health, but they chose not to see it that way. They found even a few patchy bits of blue enough in skies of their lives.

Life does not have to be perfect to be good.

This seems to be the spirit behind 1 Thessalonians 6:16-18: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.*”

I wish you a wonderful thanksgiving. May we all know the fullness of God’s blessing in the midst of whatever life brings our way.

Troy

OnFire is a letter on faith and character written by Troy Dennis.  Married  to Jan, Troy is a chaplain and has more than 20 years of pastoral experience. This letter published Oct 10, 2016. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or reply, email onfireletter@gmail.com. Blog located at www.onfireletter.blogspot.com