It was 36 degrees today. It felt like a whole new world. I walked more slowly, took deep breaths and closed my eyes while lifting my face towards the sun. You would have thought it was 60 degrees the way I was acting.

And then I thought back to every fall, when 50 degrees seems darn right chilly and I get all bundled up.

Or in my upstairs bedroom in my eighty-year-old house that doesn’t have a great venting system apparently.We have one of those scientific clocks that also tells us the room temperature.Probably not the best idea to have in a room that gets to 56.2 degrees on a regular basis during the winter months.Because 56.2 is freezing.It’s so cold, I shiver and my back tenses up and remains that way.

How can 36 feel like spring? And 50 feel like winter? And 56 feel like I live in an igloo without socks?

Perspective. It’s all about perspective.

What are you just coming off of?Something good?Then odds are if a bad thing comes around the bend, it just might feel worse than it really is.Just waded through a tough stretch?Whatever happens to you next is going to feel great, even if it’s just finding a dollar on the sidewalk.

But either way…good or bad…or somewhere in between…we can have a stabilizing force deep inside of us that grounds us and holds us steady.It can be 36 or 86.I can be in the middle of a circumstantial heaven or a situational hell.But as long as I’m living, as long as I’m drawing breath, as long as I’m reaching out for God, my perspective can remain the same.And that is this: I’m held…I’m known…I’m loved.

And that’s the only perspective that really matters.