Five Minute Friday: Opportunity

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situation." Charles Swindoll

If Pastor Swindoll is right, and I believe he is, my life could best be described as one long, continuous missed opportunity. Because when opportunity came, I sat around and complained about it. To grant myself grace, and to give it to those reading, we weren't raised to do much different. Complaining is, in all honesty, the world-wide pastime  To get political, if we really want to identify what the problem is with our nation, our world, it's that when the going gets tough, most of us get to whining. Most of us were raised to believe that when bad things happen, we should spend a lot of time complaining about it. Some of us can even bring up memories from decades ago and complain with the same ferocity as we did then. I've come to see that my view on this is not just erroneous, it is what keeps me from living the life God has planned for me. As I look back, how much better would it have been if I'd tried to find the good in the bad. Now, I know, this is easy for me. I'm naturally a positive person who was raised by negative people so it's easy for me to convert to my nature. But if what Scripture says is true, that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, then if we sit around complaining when it does, how different are we from the world? We are called to be salt and light, and the best times to do that is when the people around us are keeping tabs on our behavior, namely, when our rains come.