Borrowed Wisdom

This is not original to me, but I think it is well worth sharing.  I hope you find it as spiritually edifying as it was for me today.

First, from Dr. Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary.  His full blog can be found here:  http://www.netbloghost.com/mouw/?m=201103

I owe the “generous-stingy” distinction to the late Kosuke Koyama, who said in a speech I once heard him give, that in approaching the Bible we need to decide whether the God of the Scriptures is a generous God or a stingy one. I like that way of putting things. But I like it because it is a way of focusing on the conception of the divine attributes that we bring to our theological discussions.

Although this is not the major point of Mouw's article, I believe this attitude is foundational not only to how we read about God in the Scriptures, but how we view all of life.  If we decide we don't like something, we will undoubtedly see all the things wrong with it (the same also goes for people).

Put another way:  we see what we believe.  We do not see and then believe.  As in the gospels, we believe and then we see.  It is true with the Kingdom of God.  It is true with goodness.  It is true with all of life.  Believe in what you are looking for, and you'll begin to see it in the most unlikely of places.