Perspectives

A week ago I had a chance to talk to my lifelong mentor Marty (no not the Back to the Future guy).  We were talking shop about how his church is going and what church looks like, should look like, should feel like when it hit me:

Perspective matters.

Because it's not really about right or wrong, but simply perspective.  For instance, Marty is a phenomenal teacher.  He takes difficult ideas and makes them simple to understand yet still hard to live out.  Quite honestly, he's brilliant.  And while talking to him it occurred to me that he needs to be in front of as many people as possible.  So his church needs to be one with lots of chairs that are open to Christians to hear him speak, be challenged, and then go live out what they have learned.

That's not where Kim and I need to be right now, but it is where Marty needs to be.  Put it another way, I really have a hard time reading a whole lot.  Does that make me unintelligent or unwise?  Probably not.  It means I'm not a reader.  So I learn much more by personal observation or stories or music.

But where perspective really comes into play is our daily grind.

Last week a guest speaker from Dallas spoke at our company event.  He told a story about how is son who had cancer fought through life to live it to the fullest.  By age 7 he had his second bout of cancer, had 18 chemotherapies, 9 surgeries, over 1000 hours in the hospital and yet never once complained about it all.  He braced it and lived right through it to the end.  He loved life and especially playing baseball.  So, the day before he died from cancer (again...age 7) he wanted to play baseball.  It was the tournament and his team was tied in the bottom of the 9th.  Bases loaded.  He comes up to bat, so weak that he can barely hold the bat.  Connor hits a single and wins the game.  His dad had to carry him off the field since he didn't have the strength himself.  The next day, he died.

Connor never once complained.  Yet how many times each week, each day, each hour do we?

I found myself every day since then catching myself saying and thinking things like "I have to" or "got to" instead of "get to", forgetting that it is a privilege to live and work and play.  So, today happens to be a knock out day for the me and I can't help but think it has something to do with the change of perspective, the change of heart that comes from thinking I get to instead of have to.