WHAT DO YOU SEE?

"What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are." - C.S. Lewis

Different people, in good faith, can look at the same fact and interpret it differently. The picture painted in our minds, from our observation of a situation is dependent on where we stand or how we're standing. This is one reason why one person makes a statement and another listener gets infuriated. Why? Perception. Two people can see a glass of water and argue all day that it's half full or half empty. And I dare say, that, both of them are correct, it depends.

Everyone has the right to their interpretation of situations. What is most important is your understanding or explanation of the situation. Even though, Job couldn't exactly understand why so much calamity befell him in quick successions, he must have interpreted it differently than his wife and friends did. No wonder, his wife asked him to curse God, and die. She must've pictured sin, guilt and fault as the cause but Job saw different pictures, which is why I believe he refused to curse God. Are you going through great pain, terror and terrible losses? Has everyone advised you to go for deliverance? Or have you even been told like Job's wife, to curse God and die?

SUSTENANCE IN THE COCOON

"A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

A man found a butterfly's cocoon. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through a tiny opening on the cocoon. Then it seemed to stop making any progress, appearing as if it had gotten as far as it could. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened. The butterfly spent the next couple of minutes crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It could never fly. What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the butterfly's struggle to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.