A Mattter Of Perspective

I was wresting in my mind lately about a situation that troubled me. I prayed and asked the Lord to change the circumstance for months and nothing changed. One morning this week, with a troubled mind and heavy emotions, I asked the Lord, "Why won't you do something about this?"

Then a thought came into my mind. "What if the situation doesn't need to be changed? What if the problem isn't my circumstances right now, but my trouble is caused by the way I'm looking at it?" The thought stayed with me throughout the day. As the day progressed, slowly, but surely, I began to understand that those thoughts had been the Holy Spirit showing me the truth. It wasn't the details of my circumstances that was the problem. It was the way I looked at the circumstances.

Once I changed the way I looked at the situation, I began to experience a genuine sense of peace about it. Nothing had changed in my circumstance. I had changed.

Look at the picture above this note. Maybe you've seen this before, because it has been around since the late 1800s. What do you see in the picture? An old, haggardly looking woman? A young, well dressed woman? How you look at it will determine what you see there.

I can see either the old woman or the young woman in this picture. I choose how to focus on it, and what I choose determines what I see.

What do you see when you look at "your situation?" It's your choice.

(If you're having a problem seeing both the old and young woman in the picture, the old woman's nose is the young woman's jaw and chin.)