LOOK CLOSER.

I took a wonderful hour and a half long walk today around my new home town.  I soaked it all in - the sights and the sounds, even the smells (when I walked past the coffe shop, anyway).  I was looking for the good... and I didn't have to look far to find it.  I took this picture when I looked up underneath a big beautiful tree that was shading the sidewalk I was on and realized that it was loaded with apples.  What a wonderful surprise!  When you look for the good in life - you can usually find it.  It isn't always obvious, sometimes you have to look up, or under, or behind, or through something else to find it, but you can be confident that it is there.  On those occasions when the good is hard to find, it is helpful to remember that... that IT IS THERE regardless of whether we happen upon it or not. 
I was reading through James again recently and I stopped in the first chapter in verse 13 which says, "Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil and He Himself does not tempt anyone."  I looked up that word "evil" in the original Greek and was surprised to find that it means "what is worthless."  God cannot be tempted by what is worthless.  Hmmm.  Of course he can't!  He defines what is of worth, what is good. 
I think back to childhood days when an older child in our neighborhood would get a kick out of offering a penny to a younger child in exchange for his dime... the youngster would greedily look at that penny, note its unique color and how it was so much bigger than the dime, and would inevitably agree to the trade, having no clue he had just given up something ten times as valuable as what he received. 
How many times in life have I made a similar trade... not with money but by exchanging something much more valuable... time with my family or loved ones, the opportunity to share my faith with another person, time to pray or study the Word, time to serve others an dmeet their needs... I guess sometimes as humans, we fail to see the worth that God has instilled in these simple activiites... they don't look as "shiny" or "big" so we exchange them for something we think is better when all the while, we've been duped!  Let's look for the good... it is WORTH it!

---