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By Judith Hensley

About three weeks ago I reached for a can of decaf coffee that my mom needed on the bottom shelf at a local grocery store. The next thing I knew, I was flat out on the floor. My hip was throbbing, as well as my elbow, and wrist. Needless to say, I was thoroughly embarrassed.

There I was in the middle of the floor like a big frog and in severe pain. I did not try to jump up, even though I was totally mortified, and people were trying to get me to get up. I just wanted to be still until the initial impact and pain had passed enough to tell if I was broken, or only wounded.

I finally did manage to get to my feet and the manager filed an accident report. I walked out of the store under my own strength.

I was never sure what made me fall. There was a mop string twisted around a wheel, but I don’t know if I slipped on it, or just got dizzy from bending over. Either way, the result was the same.

My elbow was bruised. A bruise the size of a small dinner plate came up on my hip and thigh. A couple of days later, I realized I probably had a cracked rib because I had landed on that side on my purse. That pain had been hidden by the hip pain.

I’ve had a string of hard things over the last several years, but one thing I have learned is that if we look through our challenges and disappointments through the lens of God’s love, everything looks different.

I am so blessed that I didn’t break the hip that was so bruised up. I’m blessed that I didn’t fracture my elbow, or my wrist. I’m blessed that I didn’t have to go to the hospital. I still have traces of soreness and pain from each of those spots, but they are only a reminder of the goodness of God.

I’m convinced that when we are God’s children and totally put our trust in him, His love never fails us. Each day we live there are a million things that could have gone wrong and didn’t. Some circumstances allow us to see the hand of God moving in our behalf, but others are hidden from our view.

Some people keep a tab of all the ways they feel God has let them down or disappointed them. I’ve had plenty to face and overcome in my life, but looking back, if I can take a look at those things through the lens of God’s love, I realize how amazing and how good God is to me.

It seems that this Covid season of illnesses, isolation, masks, and seclusion have caused many people to look at the hard things in life through a magnifying glass and their troubles seem overwhelming because they are so focused on those things.

Part of the problem is that we don’t visit each other as we once did. We don’t socialize as we were free to do without some degree of fear. We can’t even go in a store without a mask. We have been living like cave trolls. Do what we must, then run back into our safe places again. It is far too easy to see life from a lens of disappointment and fear under the social restrictions of the last year.

If we can train ourselves to look for the good in each day, to look for the love and intervention of God in our lives in the troublesome times and filter all things through the lens of God’s love, we will see ourselves and all things around us differently.