Thunderstorms, trash or treasure, perspective

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Thunderstorms are on the way. I loved to sit outside on our patio during a thunderstorm. I can no longer do that, but I still love to hear the thunder and rain on the roof. Even that's kind of attenuated since I am now on the bottom level of a three-story apartment building. But the storms have not changed, nor has my awe of them.

At work I have a totally different perspective. Lightning spells trouble for us. Although there have been serious improvements made, we still get a thrill when lightening strikes our part of the plant. That is thunder like I have not heard anywhere else since we are directly below the strike point.

I suppose it is the trash-or-treasure idea played out in a different way. I often imagine, during difficult times, for instance, a drought, someone else is wishing for the very thing we already have too much of. Something like a micro view of real life.

How often we are dissatisfied with what we have, either in our direct possession, or what we have access to, work, church, shopping, schools, etc. There always seems like there should be a better, more profitable, easier, more satisfying way. Generally speaking, there is no easy way.

Like I have told my children from time to time when they would get angry. You have to get glad in the same pants you got mad in. Adjusting our attitude will, more often than not, change the perspective if not actually change the circumstances. Since we have little control over the circumstances, we need to concentrate on what we can control – our attitude, our reactions, our words.

I remember a preacher telling the story of an old woman who was a terrible gossip. After accepting the Lord and His forgiveness, she went to the pastor to see if there were away she could make amends for the words she had falsely spoken. He wisely took the penitent woman outside and shook the contents of a feather pillow into the wind. He then instructed the woman to retrieve every feather. A task just impossible, he explained, as making right things set wrong by her gossip.

Some things need to be said, but all things that need to be said can be said carefully. There are things we need to have, but what we do not now have, we can probably live without. Maybe it is time to stop withing for a better life and start living to the fullest the one we now have.

It is not easy, but I bet it would be worth it. I am going to enjoy the storm.