The other day I was talking with my uncle who lives in Maine (Hi Uncle Bob!). He and I were talking about different times when we had each left Maine in the winter months for warmer climates. We had both had the experience to leave Portland, Maine by airplane on winter mornings when the temperature was subzero Fahrenheit. In each case we recalled it to be about -7 degrees. I went to the west and he to the south on these different occasions. When we arrived at our destinations, the people there were bundled up in winter type clothing. The temperatures at our destinations were in the low 60’s. That’s right, 60’s. We had just left -7 and were now in a climate that was nearly 70 degrees warmer. We were in shirt sleeves and they were in parkas. I even ran the air conditioning in my rental car as I drove past women in fur coats.
One of the interesting points of these stories is that those people in those warmer climates actually were cold. It’s hard to imagine when you come from a place where the temperature can hover around 0 to -20 degrees for days on end, sometimes even weeks, that there could be folks out there that could feel the sensation of cold when it is +60 degrees. But all that they know is that they are cold.
Perspective is an interesting character. You either have it or you don’t; but you can acquire it. My destination in this story was actually Northern California. A few months after this incident, I was relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area by the corporation that I worked for at that time. I lived there for the next fifteen years, until 1995, when I moved to Southeastern Washington State. By the time that I left California, I had become acclimated to the warmer climate. I was now also wearing a coat when the temperature dipped down to 60 degrees, or heaven forbid 50! I recall one time in that fifteen year period when the temperature dipped below the temperature where liquid freezes, or 32 degrees F. It lasted a few hours and no one had time to get used to it. Most were grateful that they did not have to. I talked with my family in Maine on that day and they had no sympathy for us since their thermometers had not crested 0 degrees in over three days.
Perspective is an important tool to be used in order to build connection and thereby empathy for the plights of others. This is what we generally refer to as relationships. We learn the perspective of others through relationship.
We can also learn God’s perspective through relationship. When we begin to understand God’s perspective through relationship, we also begin to see why He cares about how we live our lives. It is not to control us; otherwise He would not have given us free will. It is not to see us perform goodness so that He looks good, because He already is good and anyone who comes to know Him will soon understand that. The reason He cares about how we live our lives is because how we live our lives affects our lives! Knowing God and gaining His perspective simply allows us to choose to live a life of blessing. It benefits us, not Him.
Blessings!

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