We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in His love.” 1 John 4:16
It’s like traveling around the world. I never cease to be amazed at the world that God has created for us. My wife Judy and I love to travel, and I have found a way to kinda, sorta travel while sitting right in my living room chair. It all happens courtesy of YouTube. I’m not sure why or how but one day, I stumbled upon a video of sorts that would take a part of the world and set pictures of it to relaxing music. It may be England or Africa or Germany or maybe Utah. Regardless, it is amazing and marvelous. I truly enjoy it and perhaps you should try it. And then…it got better.
So, while I was trying to pick a place to visit, I found a feature that showed live webcams from all over the world. Every few seconds, a different live video of a different part of the world would appear along with the current weather for that location. Ok…this is way cool. Imagine all these different places, all being shown live. People are walking, visiting, or perhaps sleeping. Cars are driving up and down the streets and trucks are making deliveries. It might be raining or snowing, warm or cold, sunny, or cloudy. It is a world tour of the…world.
Recently, I was watching, and a video showed up showing early morning Philadelphia. The sky was blue, and it was a beautiful spring morning. God was showing off. And then, just like that, I found myself looking at a place high in the Austrian Alps and even though it was mid-May it was snowing to beat the band. For all intents and purposes, it was still midwinter. And it was just about then that it hit me.
All those videos were just like snapshots of our lives…each one different and each one unique. As we look around some folks’ lives are like a beautiful spring morning—things couldn’t be better. Look over there and there is someone enduring the beating rain of a severe storm and finally, glance over there and someone is locked in the midst of winter. We sometimes forget that our lives, our experience may not be the experience of the person standing next to us. While our lives are neat and orderly, theirs might be filled with gale force winds and pounding hail. For us things couldn’t be better—for them things couldn’t be worse.
Can I encourage us to remember that? Can I encourage us to be sensitive to the fact that our world may not be someone else’s? Can I encourage us to be more understanding when someone seems to be rude and huffy when perhaps, just perhaps, they are doing everything they can just to stay afloat. Jesus was so good at this. He could read someone and respond and it wasn’t just because He was God in the flesh but also because He was determined to love others. We can, and should, do the same thing.
So, if you do the computer thing, check out YouTube and search for relaxing music or videos and enjoy and as you are, remember that those places are places where people are living and maybe struggling. Then, determine to be like Jesus, who managed to love each person no matter what. A song says that Jesus loves the little children, all the little children, and if He does…we should too. 1 John 4:16 says, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in His love.” We have come to know and believe that no matter what…He’s got this. Bro. Dewayne
Grits with Grace 