July 22, 2011 A Reality Check

My dad and I were on our way back to my parent's house in Siler City, North Carolina. I was driving my sister's car and popped in one of her CDs - the soundtrack from "Forrest Gump." My dad held the case and announced the names of the songs. I'm not sure why.

A familiar tune came on.There's something happening here...Classic anti-war song of the Viet Nam war era, instantly recognizable. My dad read, "For What it's Worth."

What? I thought. Apparently, songwriter Stephen Stills presented the song to a producer with the words, "I have this song here, for what it's worth" and the rest is history. The title's words appear nowhere in the song.

Since this blog bears the same name, I decided to look up the lyrics, and then, in a burst of narcissism, thought I'd keep scrolling through to see at what point my blog would appear if I googled "for what it's worth" rather than those words plus my name. Second page? Fifth?

Try 43rd. It was humiliating. To top it off, there are several OTHER blogs with the same name. And I thought I was an original. Reality check!

Of course, the REAL reality isn't based on what we google, or on what we read, or even on what other people tell us is the truth. It's certainly not based on how we feel at a certain moment. I'm sure you can relate to the fact that some moments are better than others.

Where should we go for reality? I submit to you that as created beings, we are much better off looking at the opinion of our Creator to get our best "reality checks." We can find them in the Bible, and when others let us down or put us down, we can always find encouragement (various translations):

• Ephesians 2:10 - For we are God's masterpiece, created in the Messiah Jesus to do good works that God prepared long ago to be our way of life.
• Isaiah 49:15 - "Can a woman forget her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you."
• Psalm 91:14 - Because you love me, I will rescue you. I will protect you because you know my name.

Some days I look in the mirror and see one thing. Some days I see something else. I haven't changed from one day to the next, but my perception has suffered (or been blessed) by events, words, hormones, and more. Every day our perceptions of ourselves can suffer from the opinions of others, from unkind words, from being ignored  - whether real or imagined, these perceptions share some qualities. They are not Truth, and they are temporary.

 

God's word is eternal. God's word is truth. We don't always feel like reading it, or enjoy the words we find there, but always, always, we can turn to the pages of the Bible and find the ultimate reality check. God loves us. We are engraved on his hands, Isaiah wrote, not buried on the 43rd page of a search engine.