Look at the bottom line of your life, are you in the positive or negative, red or black, Let’s Go! or Halt!
This morning I’m thinking about Losses and Gains. Yet, I want to look beyond and understand where we are, and where we are headed. With the collection of experiences, we are not just living a roller coaster of experiences. You know. Good choices and bad. Ups and downs. The stock market has been bullish, with horns raised high, for over 10 years and we’ve set records! Still, there’s a bear in the bushes just waiting to swipe his paw downward. We are taught to buy when it’s headed high, sell when it’s headed low. Losses. Gains.
Yet. It’s more than just that.
In every part of life,
a little rain must fall,
but there’s always a glimmer of hope,
a silver lining around the dark clouds.
It’s really about perspective. I will repeat this the remainder of my life. You can focus on the negative news, or you can change your perspective and look for some positive possibilities!
Think about it!
During this current crisis (January till now), all we know in the news is this terrible virus. Yet, how many others have died from other diseases? Suicide? Accidents? Crime? Aborted? Or simply succumbed to life itself? How many have contracted other diseases? Recovered? How many born to replace all these numbers? What’s the total death count of anything? Everything?
Perspective!
What’s that old adage? You are what you eat. Well. There! You are who and what you surround yourself with. The downside of “people” and “news”, they all pound and mold you into their image. The upside of “people” and “news” is that you perhaps need insight, camaraderie, even glass half full instead of the reverse. You choose your guidance circle wisely, grasshopper.
Here’s an interesting statistic website that shows the numbers I’m asking about. [https://www.worldometers.info/]
What’s This Have to do With Today?
Someone shared an insight this week,
“It’s no longer the information age.
We’re way past that.
It’s now the age of learning how to sift through and get what you need.”
The Bubble of information has burst and it’s spewing all over the place!
There is no longer a hole in the dike to keep your finger in to hold back the flood! Now you need to choose wisely that which gets you wet!
How do you do it? I start whittling away at the mass of information and narrow my focus on getting what I need to not be drowned. In fact, I learn to drown out the noise long before it gets me!
Part of my focus has been returning to old words from older authors and gravitating to my roots instead of looking at the modern writers. Hidden in these stories are the same things you and I are dealing with today. Life. Death. Demic. (As in Pandemic, Epidemic, Endemic)…
Here’s an Old Poem Snippet
Recently, I posted a snippet of a poem from Emily Bronte. She is not on my radar of research, but her words spoke loudly to me. More than any modern voice.
I know not how it falls on me,
This summer evening, hushed and lone;
Yet the faint wind comes soothingly
With something of an olden tone.
Forgive me if I’ve shunned so long
Your gentle greeting, earth and air!
But sorrow withers even the strong,
And who can fight against despair?
~Emily Bronte
She was from a family of writers in England in the early 1800s. Wuthering Heights is her claim to fame and it was published one year before she died. Her sisters, Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre and Anne penned The Tennant of Wildfell Hall. These all sound like gains, but the losses were heavy and deep. Six children lose their mother to cancer, two older sisters die from possibly a typhoid outbreak. Tuberculosis was rampant. There was only one son among the six children, and he died in 1847, and Emily caught a bad cold which turned into her cause of death the next year.
All the children died before the age of 40.
Are Our Times Any Different?
From the current histrionics of disease to all the other aspects of life that are equally bad, are we living in any different time than those that went before us?
Probably not. Only, it is our present world and we are living it!
My life includes a range of experiences that is unique to me since 1955. Space program. Assassinations. Wars. Computers. Internet. Mobile phones.
Mt St Helens exploded 40 years ago yesterday, and that was the year we moved to Alaska. 6 months later we were driving up I-5 late at night and never noticed the tragedy except for the mucky roads…
Ravi Zecharias died today from cancer. Born 9 years before me in another place and time, but I loved to hear him talk. His website says his whole mission was wrapped up in this phrase:
“Helping the thinker believe and the believer think.” [Source]
Both are in my lifeline. Separated by a generation of time, and thousands of miles of living.
Here’s My Thought
I was thinking about Daniel facing the Lion’s Den, the 3 Hebrew lads facing the fiery furnace, all the while living in exile. Jonah was thrown overboard to assuage the storm, only to be swallowed by a great fish and finally coming to his senses to finish the job he agreed to.
These two stories are about 150 years apart of occurrence, yet, we see them only a few pages apart in the Bible. We read them as if there are so ancient we cannot comprehend their occurrence. We fail to comprehend the thread of history to tell us their connection. But they were ancient stories that tell of the ongoing tragedy and living of our history.
We are so wrapped up by the current news we fail to see all the other pages of life. It’s like focusing on the tree and ignoring the forest. Life is more than a tragedy. It may be a thread in the fabric of our existence.
I want to keep everything in perspective.
Ravi tells the story of how God prevented them from facing a tragic event (read the link above) and it rooted his view of life.
“God will stop our steps when it is not our time, and He will lead us when it is.” ~Ravi Zacharias Click To Tweet
Losses and gains are not mine to worry about. When it’s my time God will lead me. When not? God will stop our steps so we continue to live. This is the blessing of looking beyond losses and gains!
Praying for you!