The Right To Be Heard

Last Saturday night, at church, our pastor said something that has been repeating in my mind all week long. "You have to earn the right to be heard." Often, we have to earn the right to be heard by them before we can ever share the gospel with them. They must see us as an authentic display of God's love. We can't just come in and start "preaching" at them. Of course, I'm paraphrasing and putting it in my own words, but the gist is the same. I have never been comfortable with "witnessing" in the conventional idea, but I like the idea of earning the right to be heard in people's lives. If I listen to people and try to understand where they are coming from, as our pastor suggested, then we have an idea of who they really are and what they are truly searching for.
Maybe that is what is happening in our lives right now. From all appearances, my man and I are sickeningly in love, and we are. It would be easy to believe that our relationship is just so easy because life has been easy to this point, life has been prosperous until now. Of course we love life. Life has, so far, been good to us. But now that life is being a bit cruel, how are we? Now that life seems to be dealing us a bad hand, can our love stay strong? Our love is stronger today than it ever has been. It's hard and I wish it were different, but it's not. That's just the way life goes.
I've been reading a book titled "Stop Whining, Start Living" and it speaks of perspective and it's ability to change how we look at almost any situation we face. Yes, we are financially challenged, BUT we have experienced kindness from strangers in a new way. Our eyes have been opened to the many friends we have around us. We have grown in our faith as we watch God provide over and over again. We have grown in our love as we cling to each other during this craziness. We have lost weight as we no longer can afford to eat out as much (sad isn't it).
We can sit and whine or we can embrace what we have. And what we have gained and are gaining, in the lives of those who have been watching us, is the right to be heard. And we will use that to glorify God in whatever way He sees fit.