From The Pastor’s Pen – By Brian Horrobin
This is it, the final day of the year and now we are on the cusp of getting another one started.
This is a perfect time to have an attitude check.
Let’s consider the wise words of Victor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor who learned incredible life lessons while detained in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.
Here is what he said: “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”
We cannot change the things that happened in this past year, and there will be things coming our way in the year ahead that are also unavoidable.
However, one thing that you can change is your attitude in the given circumstances you will face.
Last fall I spoke with a man in my church who was putting his house up for sale.
As we stood chatting just inside his front door I noticed how beautifully decorated this area of the house was.
He then reminded me about a time a few years earlier when he and his family arrived home from a time away in a sunny location.
While they were gone the pipes has frozen and then thawed, and the house had completely flooded.
Upon their arrival home they found their cat huddled on a bookshelf, mere inches away from the water, and then a solitary orange toothbrush floating down the river coming down their stairs towards that same front door.
Their response?
They had a good, hearty laugh!
Remember that this week when adversity comes your way.
