What good could we do in the world if we stopped viewing people as problems?

BIBLICAL POINTS OF REFERENCE:

"All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. [And] be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ."

~Ephesians 4:31-32

"A joyful heart is the health of the body, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones."

~Proverbs 17:22

The way we view someone can have a dramatic effect on the way we treat them and the way we act around them. I'm sure you've all had an arch-nemesis in high school, who you were purposefully not very nice around (or at least not as nice as you were to everyone else) just because you perceived them as your enemy. If you're like me, you sometimes view your siblings as annoying and hard to live with, and thus you treat them with impatience and rudeness. Whomever you view in a negative light, for whatever reason(s), has a negative impact on you. It's like you're going around with ankle weights - extra pounds that only make it harder to walk day by day. And the more people you view in an ugly light, the more it starts to eat at you when you see them and have to interact with them. And it's frustrating! So let me ask you all a question: What exactly have they done to you that has made you see them in such a negative way that you think it is much more worthwhile to hold on than to let go? Chances are you've done something similar, and chances are you got backlash for it too. And chances are, you're not going to get anywhere acting the way you do to them. What if we started seeing people for who they truly are: Children of God. I bet you anything that if you looked at that high school enemy and saw the face of God instead you wouldn't treat them badly. I bet you anything that if you looked at each of your brothers or sisters and saw God staring back at you instead you wouldn't be so quick to boss them around. I say these things because I struggle with them too. I wonder what good I could do in the world if I stopped seeing people as problems and started seeing them as sons and daughters of our King. I wonder what kind of happiness I would feel if I stopped holding on to all that toxic energy and started putting my waking hours into more useful activities, like spending time with my family or going for some exercise or hanging out with friends. And all we have to do to get there is switch our perspective on people. Whether they've hurt us in the past or not, God still wants to see them in Heaven. Whether they've made mistakes of not, God still loves them, just as He loves us despite our shortcomings. So are you going to change your perspective? And as a result are you going to change the way you act? Are you going to change the world? Your Laughing Sister, Callahan

Check out the BEING GODLY WOMEN and WISDOM quotes pages for more inspiration!