What a blessing it is to be part of a church family that takes seriously God’s call to help others and serve the Lord! This past Sunday we put a big dent in our budget deficit with a contribution that was about $8500 over our regular budgeted amount! Perhaps you still have some making up to do, or want to increase your giving. Let me encourage you to add some each week to your regular amount. You will likely not even miss it. If you have missed several weeks of giving and can’t afford to make it all up in one gift, figure out how long you want to take to catch up between now and the end of the year and increase your giving accordingly. There’s really no good reason why our church should finish this year under budget in our giving.
It’s all about perspective.
I thought about this as I was following my favorite baseball and football teams lose big Monday night. Texting with our daughter in Texas we were commiserating together as the Rangers were losing to the A’s (needing just one win I might add to win their division) and the Cowboys were getting thumped on national television by da Bears. For some reason I just wasn’t reacting as, um, strongly as I might have expected. Granted, I did go to bed at the start of the 4th quarter of the Cowboys game and LONG before the Rangers were finished playing. That however had more to do with sleep than attitude. Pretty sure I will never get used to Eastern Time…
But as I thought about it I realized it was my perspective.
You see Joyce and I had visited earlier that day with Wayne and Brenda Gregg and their family. As you know their 46-year-old son Tim had heart surgery last Monday to replace his aorta. For some reason or another my favorite teams losing just didn’t seem like as big a deal as it might have on another day.
Perspective.
It’s Joyce’s mom, Liz Messick, Jan Hummel, and others and their families enduring cancer and cancer treatments. It’s Sheryl Prato losing her 50-year-old brother. It’s so many others suffering in so many ways.
And on the bright side, it is Ryan Parrish being baptized. And others experiencing all kinds of joy and blessing.
Perspective.
How’s yours? Are you seeing through the lens of the care and love of God, and the hurts, needs and joys of your brothers and sisters? Or are you seeing things only as the world sees them? What’s really important to you when it’s all said and done and you are completely honest with yourself and your God?
Perspective. What’s yours?