I was sorting through some sockets yesterday and kept misjudging the sizes. I shouldn’t have because I’ve been working with these tools all my life. Everything was off by a size or two. I grabbed a 5/8 thinking it was a 9/16. And the 9/16 looked exactly like a 1/2. That’s when it dawned on me. I was judging the sizes based on how I remember them from my childhood.
Have you ever heard someone say that we don’t get near the amounts of snowfall that we did when they were children? They will say how the snow used to be up to their knees or waist when they were kids and now it doesn’t get near that high. What they are forgetting is that their knees and waist were a lot lower to the ground when they were younger. So, it’s not actually snowing less, they are just taller.
My brother and I were looking for a house of some of our parent’s friends. We used to go visit them when we were kids. It was a big white house that sat far back from the road. It had a huge front yard with some oak trees up by the road. We would often hit the fallen acorns with a wiffle ball bat. We never feared hitting the house because we were so far away. As men trying to find this house, we couldn’t seen to find it. We knew where it was, but in its place stood a smaller white house with a shallow yard. The oak trees were there, but something had changed. We had. The same house and yard that seemed so expansive as children had now shrunk down because of our perspective.
Problems are like this. The things I used to worry and fret about as a child, no longer concern me. The woes I had as a teenager and young adult don’t matter. The problems I would fret over as a new, young pastor don’t get to me like they used to. My perspective has changed.
Have you ever told a problem to someone and they act as though it’s no big deal while you are losing your mind over it? They have a different perspective than you. One of experience, one of understanding that everything is going to work out fine.
Panic is the opposite of trust.
Joel Stiff's Adventure 