A thought from reading Max Lucado

I just started reading a book by Max Lucado entitled It's Not About Me. His second chapter ends with a story about him as a child at his uncle's funeral. He claims that his 9 years of life had not prepared him for this moment...for death. So this 9 year old child is afraid. He looks around and sees his normally jovial family crying or speechless. It is when he sees his father, who's sitting next to him that he finds comfort. Let me share with you how Lucado remembers it.

He (Max's dad) turns his face toward me and smiles softly. "It's okay, son," he assures, laying a large hand on my leg. Somehow I know it is. Why it is, I don't know. My family still wails. Uncle Buck is still dead. But if Dad, in the midst of it all, says it's okay, then that's enough.

He goes on to say that he could look around at the people in the room and find fear, or he could look to his father and find faith. How many of us need to quit looking at a world that is corrupted by sin and selfishness; a world where fear can be seen, and take a glance in the direction of our Father; a place where faith can be found?

One of my best friends in the world is a self-proclaiming pessimist. (You know who you are!) But I wonder how many of us would become less pessimistic about this life of ours if we spent more time looking in our Father's eyes searching for faith than looking through the fearful eyes of the world. Is that not where our only optimism can come from?