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What We See

Here is an analogy from a book called A Grief Observed: Imagine you are in complete darkness. You believe you are in a cellar or dungeon. Then, you hear a distant sound. The sound is something like the sound of waves, the rustling of trees, or the sound of cattle; or it could be a closer, yet still soft, sound, like the sound of a friend's chuckle. Either way, the sound is something good. You are either outside, surrounded by nature; or you are inside, yet comforted by a friend.

This taught me that our perspective about our circumstances can be completely mistaken, even if we've held that perspective over a long period of time. We see in the darkness hopelessness, and ignore the breeze that gives comfort. We hear in the laughter heckling that isolates us, not camaraderie that reminds us that we have close connections and are not alone.

Refuse to listen to those thoughts that tell you anything other than your inherent worth, however long they've tried to convince you otherwise. It is easy to listen to an argument that you have heard repeated time and again. That argument, in time, becomes a mindset that influences your view of yourself and of your relations with others. If you allow it, you forget that this mindset is not the only manner of seeing yourself, and you end by seeing the dark. You become hopeless when you have great hope; you believe your problems are unique, that you are alone, though friends surround and identify with you.

God meant creation to be stunning, a canvas of his creativity. Why should you not be included in this? "We do not belong to the night or to the darkness," says the Bible; but those in Christ are "all children of light," whom God "called out of darkness into his wonderful light." We may not see it at the moment, but that is what we mean to God. Thought by thought, we can begin to see ourselves in this same way, if only we begin to refuse the mindset that in Christ we are anything less than perfect in God's eyes.

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