What are you seeing?

The road to becoming a champion was proving quite challenging for one of my dogs. Her mother was practically unbeaten in the ring so a few defeats with this one was causing me to question her ability. I began to look at her and see only her faults. In reality she only had two out of the many attributes a judge is looking for. But all I could see were these two. They became huge in my mind. So much so I had seriously considered selling her on as a pet as I only want to breed Champions and in my mind she was not going to make it because of these two now massive faults.

The show arrived, which I had determined would be her last chance to perform and win. It was a big one -- Regional Specialty with 26 other dogs entered. She won! (See picture.) Very few breeders ever get to win a Regional specialty. That is not the amazing thing,  however. What amazed me was how I looked at my dog after the win. Now I saw all the amazing qualities she has that allowed her to win. I still knew she had two faults but they were not as significant now and could be overlooked in light of the qualities.

I often see this play out in life. Often we choose to see the negative in a situation, in a person, in an event. No matter how small the fault it can grow and become something so big it hinders relationship, robs us of joy, destroys unity and so consumes us we can no longer see the beauty that is there. In fact, there is usually more beauty, more good and positive attributes, but somehow we choose to focus in on the negative.

How do you look at life -- do you tend towards seeing the negative first? Are you able to see past the negative and observe the positive, the beauty? The Bible tells us "all things were made by Him and for Him" .  May we be a people who look for the beauty first and chose to be positive,  even in the presence of the negative.