“If people have a grateful eye, they will find something to celebrate even in the worst of circumstances. The Bible calls this having a ‘good eye.’ Having a ‘good eye’ in life changes how you see yourself and everything around you. . . . We want our reality to reflect the good things we choose to focus on.”- Mark Batterson
“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness.”- Matthew 6:22-23 (NLT)
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”- Aldous Huxley
Mark Batterson concludes Chapter 13 of A Trip around the Sun with a story about the time he took his son Parker, then sixteen, skeet shooting. However, the range required taking a safety class first. One thing the instructor taught them stood out — we each have a dominant eye. Hence, when you shoot, you close the other eye. Close the wrong eye and you find it hard to hit the clay pigeons.
Therefore, Mark observes, what holds true for skeet shooting holds true for life. Consequently, we see the world as we are — not as the world is. As one of NCC’s core values states: your focus determines your reality.
So, Mark notes, you need to learn how to frame or reframe the adventure God’s designed for you. That’s part of discovering it.
In conclusion, Mark reports, Martin Seligman, the former president of the American Psychological Association, once said that each of us possesses an explanatory style. Simply stated, our explanatory style defines how we explain our experiences to ourselves. And that viewpoint is more important than the actual experience.
Hence, Mark exhorts:
‘”Stop and think about it: today is the first day and the last day of your life! It has never been before and will never be again. When you have that revelation, you number your days. You try to make every day a masterpiece.”
Today’s question: Do you tend to see life with a grateful eye or a critical eye? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Bumping into someone’s anointing”
