A Three Legged Stool

   There are Opportunities, and there are Responsibilities, but in order to have a stable 3-legged stool, I must have the third leg. For me, at least, the third word that started this year was Relationships. The word came to me on Tuesday, along with the other two, but I had to do some thinking about what that all meant. Relationships involve others, people that come into my life for a brief moment or for a long or intermediate time. People whose lives intersect with mine for different time frames. People that I know well and others that I do not know at all.

   God gives me opportunities in my life, and He gives me the responsibility to make something out of these. He gives me people along with those times, and so the responsibility extends in that direction  also.

   I saw at least four individuals as I walked the cart path this morning. A golf course employee who was cutting the greens, and who I just waved to and walked on. A man that I knew, walking his dog on the side of the course, but too far away to do anything else but wave. A lady, who lived along the path, filling her bird feeder, that I did not know and just waved to as I walked. Finally, a man actually playing golf at that early hour, that I stopped and spoke to as he went to the next green.

   Were there any opportunities there that I needed to take some responsibility toward? Was it just to acknowledge that they were in that place, and that they were actually people, or was there something more? Was it for just that brief moment or maybe leading to a future time? At this point I cannot know, but at least I did not just shut my eyes to their presence. Brief relationships, but possibly more.

   There are a whole continuum of relationships in my life, from God at the one end to the man on the street, and I have a responsibility toward each. Maybe in varying ways, but one nevertheless. Relationships make the life and without these, it would be a sterile vacuum.

   So how do I relate these three words into my life?

   The God-orchestrated circumstances in my life bring opportunities that I have a responsibility toward. These circumstances also involve people that are important in some way, but not just because they are in my life, but because they are God's creation also, and important to Him.

   Too often I see others in the light of what they can do for me, from God on down to the ones that I do not know. I need to see them as God sees them, important human beings, made in His image, and not just a part of a nameless mass. I can, and should, treat them with the dignity that they deserve.

   My responsibility may be greater for God, family and friends, but it also reaches to those whose circumstances have intersected with mine, in any way.

   Let me remember that when I get up from this time, and live it out with everyone.