Own Your Role

I simple thought came to me this morning that kept developing until I actually learned something profound from it.

We all view life in first-person narrative. No matter how close we are to people, we still view them through our eyes and understand them depending on how they interact with OUR life.  Like, you might be friendly with the elderly couple across the street and you like them just fine and are happy they're there.  They're just a small part in the grand scheme of your life, but a pleasant one.  In the same way, you might be that nice, young couple who moved in across from the elderly couple and they like you just fine and are happy you're there, but you're just an even smaller part in their longer lives full of friends and acquaintances.  I think we tend to limit people to what they mean to us, for good or ill, based soley on our experiences with them as they appear in our lives.

Let's think of it as a movie.  If your live is a movie, you're the star.  Your spouse and immediate family would be your co-stars along with your best friends.  The next tier down would be your coworkers, folks you talk to at church, and moderately close friends.  Way down past that is the grocery check-out clerk who added up your mangos last week and the young girl who served you a Dr. Pepper at the McDonald's drive through.  These people have varying degrees of importance to you based on their role in your movie.

Swap it around now.  You have a role of varying importances in the movies of EVERYONE you will come into contact today.  You'll be quite important (hopefully) to your spouse, less so to your coworkers, less so the girl at McDonalds.  They all have their own movie playing and you have a role in it, just like they do yours.

Here' the application.  What do you want your role to be?  Do you want to be the loving, supportive spouse, or the argumentative, selfish (antagonist) spouse in your wife/husband's movie?  Do you want to be the helpful, true friend or the gossipy backstabber?  Do you want to be the thoughtful, mannerly customer who brightens the clerk's day or the self-absorbed jerk of a customer who makes the clerk's life a living hell?

Everyone you meet today has their own movie playing and you get to choose your role.  Whether you're a Christian or are just trying to be a decent human, please choose the higher path.  Please be the one who makes their movie better.  If everyone realized that everyone else has their own movie and are not just actors in ours, we would all be much happier.

God bless you and all the movies you star in today.

When God speaks.

This is a bold way of starting out the Bowling for Truth blog, but here it is...tonight I think God spoke to me.  I don't mean I heard a booming voice with a nice trumpet accompaniment, but the scripture I needed to hear appeared in my head without me asking for it.  Out of nowhere.  Here's what happened.

My family and I are going through the process of saying goodbye to a dear family member who is being taken away from us much too soon.  As I drove to his house at lunch today I spent the 30 minute drive going over what I needed to say to him before he was gone.  I bounced back and forth from crafting my final statements, to praying, to singing, to being on verge of outright weeping.  After sitting around for an hour at his house, he woke up and I got to speak to him right before I had to leave.  Instead of the many things I meant to say, I just held his hand, told him I loved him, and joked around with him, because that somehow seemed more appropriate.  It was a nice time and I left hoping I will see him again, but knowing I might not.

Tonight as my wife and kids were leaving an early Thanksgiving meal with friends I was thinking about the day and all the hurt the family is dealing with.  Then it appeared in my mind, as clear as if someone had read it out loud..."Let not your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God.  Trust also in me."...the words of Jesus from John 14:1.  Wow!  That hasn't happened to me in years!

Here's the best part...I heard a few years ago about the unique way Jesus would teach.  He would reference one verse in response to questions, but he would intend for the listener to understand that his REAL point was being made in the verse before or after.  As I drove along pondering this verse that had been given to me, my mind moved onto the following verses.

"My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back  and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." - John 14:2-3

The verse I was given comforted my heart, as it reminded me that I DO believe in God and also in Jesus and should have trust in them to do what is right, but the following verses tell me that our uncle is going to a place prepared by Jesus to be WITH Jesus!  Awesome!

I grieve for our aunt who will have to learn to live without her soul mate.  I grieve for those of us who love him and will miss him.  I grieve for the world, who is losing one of the finest men I have known.  But I am comforted that God sees more than I and his ways are good, even if we're too close to see them.  I am comforted that our uncle is headed to a place where he will no longer hurt and can be with those he has been missing.  I am comforted that I finally got some kind of an answer for the pleading prayers I sent up on his behalf.

What's coming next for our family will hurt so bad, but God is good.  I will believe in God and also in Jesus.  I will try to not let my heart be troubled, even though it's breaking.  I will praise him in this storm.

Praise be to God, creator of the Heavens & Earth, who gives and takes away.