IS THE GLASS HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL?

It’s all in how you look at it.

When I was born in 1957, Dad was 69 and Mom 40 years old, and as you might imagine all of their friends were in the same age group.  People that experienced WW1, the twenties, the depression, the “dust bowl days,” and WW2.  They had first hand knowledge of what life in rural America was like in those years, and when these folks got together and started reminiscing about the hard times and good times of those bygone eras, I listened.

Most of those folks that told those stories are now with their maker, but songs like the one by Alabama tell of the hardships of that day such as those old folks talked about, see the following excerpt;

Well somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn’t tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt’s a gonna save us all

Well momma got sick and daddy got down
The county got the farm and they moved to town
Poppa got a job with the TVA
He bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet

Sing it…

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain’t nobody looking back again

For those of you that have been on the street, or close to it like me, perhaps we have been blessed because from past experience we know that life goes on.  Most of us have at one time or another, lost everything of material value.  But in the case of Ann and I we try to walk a life in the light of God just trying to survive from one day to another, and amazingly people with more material possessions are at times jealous of us, some have even admitted their envy of Ann and I to our face!  But just as amazing is the fact that many of these folks with more means than ours, come to us with their problems when they fall.

One of Ann’s cousins laughed at us because our TVs came from thrift stores, while they had just purchased a 60 inch flat screen for 3 grand.  But when they need advise guess whose phones ring?
Another relative criticizes us because our vehicles are old and he has brand new, but when he couldn’t make a car payment, guess who he came to?  I can’t begin to enumerate the people that were well known by their minister as long as they could contribute large sums of money to the church, but when on hard times their minister no longer knew them and guess who they came to?

Perhaps for those of us that have never known anything but hard times, when the entire country faces tough economic reality, this reality this experience while of concern for us, just isn’t so bad. “Well somebody told us Wall Street fell But we were so poor that we couldn’t tell” —- making do with less or even having the experience to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear (allegorically speaking of course) can be a blessing.  And we can bear witness for Christ in our disadvantaged financial state by standing tall and exorcising our fears of harsh financial reality or animosity that we might feel for those that have gained wealth at the expense of our peers,  and by placing these “demons” and others in their proper place, allow God’s grace to ooze out of our pores thereby showing the world that the meek are truly those with a glass half full.