It’s All in How You Look at It.

 

By G. E. Shuman

 

I’ve been amazed, and thankful, for the wonderfully mild winter we are experiencing here in Vermont, this year. At this writing, (and I know the situation can change quickly,) there is not one bit of snow on the little lawn surrounding my Barre City home. Yes, that’s amazing to me! It would be less amazing in April, but this is mid-February, after all. We have had beautiful winter sunshine and higher than usual temperatures for this time of year. Which, since you probably live here too, you already know. I have often said that any days that my furnace and snow blower don’t have to run, are good days!

Still, there might be something slightly selfish in my assessment of the recent weather. When I was younger, I’m sure I looked at the Biblical idea of the rain falling on the just and the unjust to mean that ‘bad’ people experience downpours in life, but so do ‘good’ people. I don’t think I took much thought to the fact that there really aren’t any ‘good’ people to get drenched with rain.

More recently, in my wonderful situation of aging wisdom, (ya, sure,) I’m looking at the rain and snow thing a bit differently. Rain and snow are not ‘bad’ things. I believe that The Bible was referring to the rains as actual blessings. For every one of us who will soon be praying for a sunny summer weekend at the beach, there will be at least one farmer praying for rain that weekend for his crops. For every person like me, who looks out his window and at his phone every winter morning to see if we have been ‘cursed’ with snow and low temperatures during the night, there is a skier, snow-mobiler, or winter resort employee looking for the ‘blessings’ of those things.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a person who must talk myself into seeing the positive aspects of life, at times. I don’t try to look for the dark clouds, but don’t often seek the silver linings either, and that is wrong. We can’t change the weather, or many other things that we face in life, no matter what our point of view is.

In the words of Christian pastor and author Charles Swindoll: “We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how l react to lt. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitude.”

Like I said, it’s all in how you look at it.