The way we look at things shapes our perspective of the world around us. We may be seeing the same event, but depending on what is in our hearts and minds, we may come to very different conclusions, and therefore, we will live our lives very differently as a consequence. For the last three weeks I have had to balance not only the closing of the church building, the lack of human contact with you, having the children at home and becoming a letter writing/ video making/ telephone call kind of minister, while at the same dealing with a very painful and lasting gout crisis that made every single second of at least two week very painful, almost impossible to walk at times and interrupting my sleep every hour or so and feeling the nausea that was caused by the medicine that was supposed to help me get better. And I was determined to find words of hope and joy to share with you, because I also needed them desperately. I had to constantly re-adjust my perspective not to surrender to the pain and hopeless feeling, but to find the grace that is enough, the mercy that is new and the love that sustains in every season of life.

It reminds me of the story of a family that had two very different sons; one was very optimistic and looked for the bright side of everything, while the other was pessimistic and hard to encourage. The parents decided to run a little experiment. They wrapped two gifts, one for each son, and hid to look at their reactions. To the pessimistic they decided to give a bicycle. Beautiful, brand new, with a great look; any child would have loved to receive such gift! But when the child opened the box and saw the bike, he said: “oh, no! With my luck I would probably fall trying to ride the bike and I will certainly hurt myself!” Their hearts dropped! But when the more optimistic child open his little box, all he found was… horse manure. I know, what kind of parents do that??? But his son’s face suddenly brighten up, a great smile appeared and he said excitedly: “Do you know what this means??? I’ve got a horse somewhere! Where is it???” Perspective is everything.

We are going through pretty tough times, I know. I’ve got friends and family in every continent and they are all experiencing different levels of distress. But I keep finding a common denominator among them: the ones who are more connected with news, that are constantly in social media, the ones that engage in endless discussions online… well, they are the more anxious, more distressed, they are the ones with a grim perspective about the future.

But the ones that are balancing news and regulations, struggles and challenges with their faith, spending time praying and reading the Bible, that are looking for opportunities to be a blessing to someone else, the ones that are not looking for someone to blame but are looking for word of encouragement to share, or a way to respond to a need… the ones who are living the words of Isaiah 26.3 are facing the same struggles with a different attitude:

“You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all who thoughts are fixed on you.”  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for burying our heads on the sand and pretend nothing is wrong. I’m inviting you to balance the bad news and conspiracy theories with the hope and grace that comes from setting our minds and trust in God. To never forget that He has given us something that not epidemic, virus, quarantine or even death can take away from us: his love. So we keep going, with eyes wide open for opportunities to be a blessing, and hearts wide open to receive help and support. Tomorrow will be different than today, and will be definitely better than our yesterdays. Let’s grow and mature and ready to be a better church, a better community, a better world when tomorrow comes.