I’ve been reminded lately of how perspective can change everything.
Tonight Will had a baseball game. The whole game was filled with examples of perspective. And reactions to differing points of view.
Will plays on a team made up of boys from a local Catholic church/school. We are definitely outsiders. There’s a perspective for you! These are 9 and 10 year old boys. And the parents…Lots of pressure form the parents. Every pitch, “do this, don’t do that, watch for this, point, throw, catch, watch, keep you eye on…” and on and on. Did I mention lots of pressure? One boy, whom appears to have some talent, struck out twice. Both times, he walked back to the dugout in tears. Will struck out once and literally hopped back to the dugout. Perspective. At one point, Will came and sat with me in the stands and was telling me how they could score 8 runs in the last inning to tie the game. He was jabbering away about who could hit the ball and help the team get back in (at 9-1, not sure they were ever IN!) it. That one run at the time. Yeah, my kid. Watched 4 balls cross and he walked in a run. “Way to watch the ball, WIll!”
Lots of issues with the home ump. He tended to call way outside balls, strikes (and thus send kids back to the dugout crying!). The parents on our team were warned about making comments about balls and strikes as the umps had warned the coaches twice. The evil side of me was hoping they would call a forfeit. Now how do you explain that to the kids? The parents saw balls. The ump, apparently, strikes.
Perspective.
Issues involving perspectives in the church. We are (trying to) embarking on some plans to do outreach. But, how will people “view” us? We tend to see others just like us and make judgement calls based on what WE think they see. But we are looking through “raised in the church” glasses. If our viewpoint is clouded by that, then we may never truly see as they see. How can we get to that level? It comes to a point where we can evaluate and make assumptions all day long and never get to the outreach part. It can be pretty easy to talk ourselves out of doing outreach. For fear of being “too this” or “too that” or even “not enough of”, we fail to even do anything.
Again, perspective.
And finally, eternity. I was reminded today of Moses’ mission. He was 40 years old (according to the speaker I was listening to) when he had to make a choice. Stay in the secure and extreme luxury of the confines of the palace where he was raised or choose to be mistreated along with his people as a slave. When everyone would certainly encourage the former (think of how much GOOD you can do in that position), his call was somewhere else. Think his mom was proud of him when he turned his back on all he had been afforded and gave it up for slavery? And then exile for 40 years? I’m sure there were those who said, “what happened to that Moses guy? He could have done so much for us, to help us unbind the chains of slavery.”
Our perspective is so clouded by the world in which we live, not the world in which we are meant for. If I truly lived for eternity, could I make that same choice as Moses did? I so often want to choose the least harmful and most safe and secure path. My mind is so not on eternity.
I need to change my perspective.
