From the deck of our small home we have a magnificent view
of the surrounding valley and mountains. (It is the main reason I wanted to buy
it a few years ago.)
In the daytime it looks like an expanded folk art puzzle
with a few patchwork farms, silos and barns, near a park with a pond. There are
many homes, large and small, with a beautiful lake in the distance. Sometimes
on clear days, like the day before Thanksgiving, the sky is speckled with hot
air balloons.
By night myriads of twinkling lights shine across the
valley. In the center of it all is the beautiful LDS Mount Timpanogos Temple.
When we first moved in our, 3 year old grandson, Noah, would
climb up on the deck railing, spread his little arms out and say,
"Look! I can see my whole wide,
wonderful world!"
Often in the early morning and evening I retreat to the deck
to relax for a few moments and look at Noah's whole wide, wonderful world.
My own problems become insignificant as I think of the
thousands of people living within my view and even beyond. Each are in their
own little mini-labs of life; learning, growing, changing, always in motion
like molecules in a test tube... reacting to opposing forces.
It doesn't take rocket science to see that every person that lives has problems and challenges. Whether you believe that is by chance or by design... it is for most of us as my mother often says: "I've never met a person I would want to trade places with."
Thankfully, we have been given the power to do more than
react. We have the ability to reason,
choose, and control to a large measure how we respond to our environment. How
well we take control or yield to our physical, emotional and spiritual
influences determines whether we will find ultimate personal growth, love,
peace or utter misery.
I am reminded of a quote from the writings of Dr. Viktor E.
Frankle: Man's Search For Meaning, wherein he shares his powerful therapeutic
thoughts formulated in the terrible test tube of Auschwitz.
"When we are no longer able to change a
situation - we are challenged to change ourselves. Everything can be taken from
a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's
attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own
way. Between stimulus and response there is a space."
As time moves us again to celebrations of the birth of Christ, known as The Prince of Peace, I give quiet thanks for my freedoms so often taken for granted, especially my freedom of personal choice which I believe is a gift from God given from before this world. This gift even he himself will not violate. Though God, our Heavenly Father, cares about us deeply, he will never force us to make good choices for our lives. Likewise he cannot take from us the consequences of poor choices except through our humility in accepting the redeeming gift of his perfect Son.
Since all of us at some time in our lives have made not so great choices... how deeply thankful I am for that!
That is what I mean when I say Merry Christmas.
Believe in the Spirit of Christmas!
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