keep your perspective

(Caribou Coffee...I like a shop named after a large, furry mammal)

Keep your perspective

There is a chalkboard on the wall of the coffee shop where I’m sitting while two of my daughters are down the road at church events. This query is posed there: “What gets you through the LONG winter?” Now mind you, the question is being asked in North Carolina, where it was 54 and sunny on January 25^th. Winter feels like a piece of cake to a guy who grew up in Northeast Ohio, where wind chills and lake effect snow are a way of life.  But someone from Florida or Arizona might well feel that this sort of winter will never end. Excitement over the weather seems to be correlated to where you started your journey, to how bad off you were to start. And we are always in danger of becoming complacent…and forgetting how good we have it now.

“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst.”

1 Timothy 1:15

The Apostle Paul wrote 48% of the books in the New Testament. He was one of the first great missionaries of the Gospel. He had a personal encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.  If ever anyone had the resume to be complacent in his faith it was Paul.  But to his immense credit Paul never would up in that place. He knew he was once the foremost persecutor of Christians and he never forgot the incalculable grace he had received.

Maybe God’s saving mercy was bestowed on us decades ago…or perhaps it’s a very recent event.  Either way, let’s follow the example of Paul, keep our perspective and remember what we were saved from.

Thanks for all you do.

Brian

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Volume 7, Number 48