Good or bad often depends on your perspective.
I was dive-bombed by a mosquito in the middle of the night not long ago. The loudest noise in the world is the silence that follows that “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. “ Is he on me or on her?” you ask yourself. When I’m awakened in the middle of the night my brain works even stranger than normal.
I knew what I felt about the situation but I began to wonder how mosquitos might feel about their nocturnal feeding sprees.
What if mosquitos had television (MTV=Mosquito Television)? And what if they made a documentary?
That night you might have seen a kind pastoral scene with a mama insect and her two little ones peacefully sucking blood from my neck like a mama cow and two little ones brunching grass in a pasture in the high Alps. All the mosquitos out there in mosquito land would watch the idyllic scene and their little mosquito souls would be uplifted.
There would even be classical mosquito music playing in the background (“E, E, E, E …. Ee, ee, ee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”).
Suddenly before the horrified eyes of the viewers a giant hand arises from nowhere and slaps the mosquitos into three little bloody spots. “Eeee!” Mosquito censors quickly stick an “R” rating on the broadcast because of the violence.
Now switch to my perspective. “Eeeeeeee!”
“Snore, snore … ? No! Please not. Grumble, grumble.”
I swat at the air above my ear. A bit later I hear them again. If I ever localized them on my neck and was able to swat them into a bloody spot, I might get out of bed and rejoice. As it is, they wake me up and when I turn on the light to crush the life from them, they’ve hidden in some unknown cranny, snickering and giggling until I turn the light off and they begin their night-time raiding once again.
The death of the mosquitos seemed a tragedy to the mosquito viewers but to me it would have been a wonderful deliverance.
Stretching It A Bit
My wife informed me that I may be stretching it a bit with that imaginative story but a good percentage of Coffee Stains stretch it a bit. Luckily I’ve got readers who have a strange sense of humor so you understand.
So much of life is perspective: he sees it like this, she sees it like that. Same situation but two different people.
Last week I asked the question: If God can do something about my situation why doesn’t He? The other part of the question was, “Is it wrong to get mad at God?” Two questions about the same subject.
You folks gave some incredible answers flowing from your knowledge of God and your life experiences.One thing that we need to remember is that God has a perspective differs from ours. He knows us more intimately than we know ourselves. He will do what is good because He is good. Three things to remember:
–Not every bad situation comes from God to test us. Often they come from the devil to destroy us. We should fight back with every spiritual weapon we can lay our desperate hands on. Don’t just lay down and whine, “It must be God’s will.”
–God is very capable to turn bad into good. But, we’ve got to let Him. Often, when we don’t get the answer we want we assume that God just didn’t want to help us or didn’t care enough to do anything about our need. Maybe there is another response. For us it’s finished, game over. But with Him, the game is never over until He says it is.
Martha: “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
Mary: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Jesus: ““Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God? … “Lazarus, come out!”
(John 11:21, 32, 40, 43 NIV)
And please don’t forget, God’s perspective is different than ours. He knows. He hasn’t forgotten. He’s on our side. He really is. Sometimes you just have to trust Him.
““I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work.” God’s Decree.
“For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.” (Es. 55:8,9 The Message)
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Hummm …
Saying, “No,” to some things enables me to say “Yes” to other things. Leon Hiebert
Don’t forget. To see the excellent responses to the question about getting mad at God:
https://davidscoffeestains.com/talk-back/
image:Flickr: creative commons (Wellcome Images)