Are you a glass half full or glass half empty person?

How do you view life? Do you see the glass half empty or half full? When things go wrong do you see God's hand in it so it isn't worse?

My son and I had this conversation just today. He sometimes sees the hand of God in bad situations, other times not so much. I think most are like that. Sometimes it is easy to see His hand working on our behalf and other times it isn't.

Here are the situations my son has dealt with in the last two days.

Yesterday at work, a stack of pallets fell. God's hand? They didn't fall on him. He saw that God protected him.

Yesterday the old van he is using to get back and forth to work while he saves up for a better one broke down. That is a bad situation. But here is the hand of God (which he saw right away and gave thanks for). It wouldn't turn. He travels on all 4 lane roads to get back and forth to work. It was afternoon when traffic was heavy. The van broke down in the parking lot where he works. He pulled out of his space went to end of row to turn and it wouldn't turn. He was able to pull in to two parking spaces and wait for help. Imagine if he was in afternoon traffic on a 4 lane??  God is good. He protected him even though the van broke, it was under the best circumstances.

Today he is cutting grass. The grass is high and damp from all the rain we have been having. The lawn mower kept killing and he had to remove the piece that keeps the grass underneath to mulch. He removed his glasses cause it was hard to see with the sunglasses clip on it. He put them down, forgot they were on the ground, turned the mower back over, started it and ran over his glasses. He came in very frustrated as you can imagine. Mad at himself for forgetting and ruining his glasses, but also feeling like what next cause of the van, and now his glasses. But here is God's hand. He has another pair of glasses. His old ones are the same prescription. They are scratched but still usable until he can get new ones. He remembered he had them, but was forgetting to look for the hand of God and to give thanks that he still has usable glasses.

Sometimes we get distracted by the bad situations in our life and forget to see or look for the hand of God. We are human. We get frustrated. But if we will just look at it to see where God is in the situation we will find He is there. He has promised us He will be. We just have to look.

Now does it still stink that now he has to spend money fixing the old van and to get new glasses? Absolutely. But look at how much worse it could have been! God is in control. He allows bad situations in our life to teach us something. What is He trying to teach my son? I don't know yet, but hopefully it will be learned quickly and he can move on. He just told me he thought of a song that says sometimes God lets us go through things to show He is still there with us. Maybe that is what God is showing him the last two days.