What If?

Watching the weather channel this morning as we ate our continental breakfast at our hotel, I was dismayed at how much of the news they reported was devastation.  So little of it, if any, was encouraging.  No attempt was made to put any positive spin on a single story it seemed.  Even stories that hinted at some amazing human who was overcoming the odds was wound down focusing on the negatives and not the battles won.  Following our breakfast, we spent some time relaxing in our hotel room and I turned to watching aerial videos of the surrounding area and it’s beauty.  As I relaxed to the music and the beauty of God’s Creation and re-creation of our big blue and green orb floating in space called Earth, I was struck with what God has gifted us with and how much of it we take for granted. 

What if we spent time looking to our Creator and what he has gifted us with instead of what our “friend” on social media is doing, or said, or is complaining about?  What if we stopped comparing our lives to “all the people” and focusing on “all the things”?  What if we focused on what God did for us, truly focused on it and what it means for us?  What if we realized that our focus on the negativity that is exuded from the culture around us is affecting us on every single level of our lives?

I grew up reading Little House On The Prairie and other similar books.  I always remember the romanticized “simplicity” of the characters’ lives.  As an adult I understand that the hard, strenuous lives they lived were far from “simple”, but the emotional and mental strain they endured was focused mainly on their small little world.  I envy that.  Our Global mindset has us focused on EVERYTHING, EVERYONE, EVERWHERE.  God created us as amazing images of himself and in his awesome perfection and all powerfulness HE is able to be everywhere at all times.  I don’t believe our humanness, in it’s brokenness, is designed to mentally, emotionally, and spiritually deal with and process all the EVERY’s.   

I am just as guilty of this as anyone, and while our heartfelt reaction to trials and problems around the world is often to try to help in some way, how often do we actually reach out to help those close by?  Our world is so full of negativity and downward views that it has seeped into every facet of our lives.  Recently a good friend of mine commented on another friend’s social media post, and while they didn’t respond to our friends post online, they took the time to discuss, correct, and complain about the post with another friend.  Again, just as guilty myself of very similar acts.  Prior to social media, what our thoughts on a friend’s morning musings were, made no difference to anyone, but today, it’s part of our daily conversations.  Not uplifting, not encouraging, “just conversation” to fill dead air possibly?  It sure has me thinking about a lot of other ideas, ideals, and habits.  What if we start filtering the content we allow into ourselves, as well as filtering the content we allow to come out as well?  Isn’t there a childhood proverb in there somewhere, “garbage in….garbage out….”?