Thanksgiving - In Perspective - Oct 10

An acquaintance of mine asked me this morning how my Thanksgiving weekend was. "Great!" I replied. I went on to tell them about how I attended a heartbreaking memorial service for a close friend on Saturday. How, on Sunday, the men in the family went into the forest to cut wood for the winter and my 10 year old daughter got trapped under a 200 pound log. How my 2 year old niece spent the day in the ER room with a dislocated elbow. How my grandmother had an allergic reaction to the strawberries she'd eaten and had her lips swell to four times their normal size....At this point she stopped me. "Wait. You said your weekend was great. This all sounds awful!"

She's right. I guess it doesn't paint the perfect Thanksgiving weekend, but she didn't have the same perspective as me. I was privy to more information than I'd shared with her - not wanting to talk her ear off.

The memorial service was sad, but our friend knew the Lord, so we know where he is and we'll see him again.

My daughter's angels were with her because I somehow managed to single-handedly lift (and I mean LIFT) the huge log off of her leg and she walked home under her own power. She was left with little more than a sprain and the shock of the accident.

My niece's elbow was reset in a few minutes and she has no lasting effects from her ordeal. They were home in time for dessert!

My grandmother's lips went down (unfortunately before I could get a picture) and she joined us for leftover turkey on Monday. She played cards with her great-grandchildren and shared stories of her childhood and laughed.

Most of all, we were together as a family. We enjoyed wonderful food and precious time with each other. That was the whole picture.

It's that way with God too. We only get to glimpse certain parts of the picture and therefore have a limited perspective of the overall situation. But God sees the big picture and often our ideas are totally off base and without merit. Remember this: God is good all the time. And for this, among many others things, I give Him thanks for my wonderful weekend, and for taking care of turning all the potentially bad things into good ones.