Responding

I am a big believer that all circumstances work out for good, even if we can't see it at the time. In fact one of my favorite bible verses tells us this is true if we "...love God and are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28) In other words, God never wastes a hurt.

Zig Ziglar wrote something along these lines that was too good not to share:

When you respond to life, that's positive; when you react to life, that's negative. Example: you get sick and go to the doctor. Chances are good that after an examination he or she would give you a prescription with instructions to return in several days. When you walk back in if the doctor starts shaking his head and says, "It looks like your body is reacting to the medicine, we're going to have to change it," you probably would get a little nervous. However, if the doctor smiled and said, "You're looking great! Your body is responding to the medication," you would get excited and feel much better. Yes, responding to life is good. Reacting to the incidents of life is negative - and that's bad. The next example validates that fact.

Today there's much turmoil in the job market and many people are losing their jobs through downsizing, mergers and takeovers. This creates some unusual "opportunities" for many people. One positive from this is that in the last five years, according to the Wall Street Journal, over fifteen million new businesses have been created, well over half of them by women. Interestingly, very few of these women had any marketable skills and all of them had great financial need. Most of the new businesses were "trust" businesses, meaning that the women collected the money before they delivered the goods or services. The Journal comments that virtually none of these women have been prosecuted and jailed for failure to deliver on that trust. That's exciting!

Many of these new businesses - possibly most of them - would never have been started had not an unfortunate event occurred in these people's lives. When those events did occur and needs became obvious, these women chose to respond and there's little doubt that many of them are better off now than they were before the "tragedy" took place.

The message is clear: If you will respond to life instead of react to it, then I've got a much better chance of seeing you AT THE TOP!