Linda Brooks Davis

Linda Brooks Davis | A Little Perspective

Linda Brooks Davis

Welcome, everyone.

Perspective. I stumbled over an  illustration of perspective on a recent visit to my hometown in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

I was born into a church-going family in Raymondville, Texas, a small farming community, in the 1940s. We were that “Ozzie and Harriet” family who shared meals around the table and actually TALKED to one another. We went to the Corral drive-in as a family, which was forbidden in dating years; joined into seasonal parades; and filled the ranks of school sports, arts, service, and academic organizations.

Childhood Perspective

Christmas_Linda Brooks DavisWe studied (not just read) the Bible and were at church every time the doors opened (Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and every other gathering, including those days-long Gospel meetings in the summer). My father (and brothers) led the singing, and Daddy taught Bible classes from age 21 to his death in 1971. We invited the preacher (permanent or visiting) for Sunday dinner. Our best friends were members of the church, and we even vacationed together a time or two.

Each church service was followed by “visiting” in pairs and small groups on the building’s front steps or grounds. We kids played chase on the lawn where the whole church shared ice cream socials, “dinner on the ground” pot-lucks, and watermelon feasts. In short, that church family—and the building itself—were the heartbeat of our family. Everything else in life revolved around it, so my memories of the building and life under that roof run deep and very strong. That building was HUGE.

Adulthood Perspective

perspectiveUntil, that is, my husband and I stopped in front of it on the visit home that I mentioned earlier. It was as if I had stepped through the back of a wardrobe and entered a land as strange as Narnia. Where had the building I remembered run off to? It was so small it seemed stooped. The front steps weren’t the large, spacious structure I remembered. They were low and narrow and completely unsuitable for conversation groupings. And the cemented area that ran from the steps to the street? No longer the parking lot-sized space I remembered, it had shrunken to downright measly. 

What had come over my old church home? Even now, I recall the surreality of facing that unfamiliar, yet ever-so familiar place. Maybe I’d entered the Twilight Zone. With our world having gone through 2020 (and, admittedly, 2021), when I saw the following post on Facebook, I just had to share it. I don’t know Jonathan Blaze Harker, don’t know what he’s about or whether I’d want to follow his posts, but I do know his insight on perspective is spot-on. Leave your comments, reactions, and maybe memories below.

Perspective from Jonathan Blaze Harker  on a June 28, 2020, Facebook post:
 
When you’re 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills six million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million perish.
 
At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn’t end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict. Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, could well have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening.
 
As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends. Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? A kid in 1985 didn’t think their 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. Yet those grandparents (and now great grandparents) survived through everything listed above.
 
Perspective is an amazing art. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through this. In the history of the world, there has never been a storm that lasted. This too, shall pass.
 

God-centered Perspective in Our Messed-up World

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights,
with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

James 1:17 NKJV

I don’t understand “no variation” or “no shadow of turning”. Don’t know about you, but I can change my mind—and emotions—quicker than you can say “I changed my mind.” Those of us who claim the name of Jesus are supposed to view the world in all its messiness through faith-tinted eyeglasses. It’s not always easy, but without Jesus, what do you DO with a world turned upside down? A universe where right is wrong, and wrong is right? Where the infallible Word of God is merely fables? And where the government, not parents, determine what our children believe and how they act? The mess is endless.

Which, I’m reminded, is one characteristic of God’s very nature, so foreign to us fickle creatures. His immutability. Endlessness. Always has been; always will be. Unchangeable. Eternal. God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1 NIV

I don’t understand this world. But I don’t have to. God does, and that’s enough for me. I’ll take God’s perspective any ol’ day. How about you?

~ ~ ~

Dear Lord, give us eyes, ears, and hearts for Your perspective in this messy world.
~ For Jesus’ sake

 

 

6 thoughts on “Linda Brooks Davis | A Little Perspective

  1. I really enjoyed this Linda,so many wonderful,precious memories.thank you for putting such treasures on paper❤️🙏🏻❤️

  2. Love this overview of your family, so blessed my family’s lifestyle and faith were the same as your family. How blessed we have been Linda, God added to our blessing in our families, to unite them together with the marriage of your brother Jerry, to my daughter Teresa. Praise God for putting those two together, Jerry has been such a blessing to be a part of your family. He was raised well. Love you Linda and all your family, Jean

  3. I loved your “church family” description and could identify with even raising my family like that. So much has changed, but those memories are priceless treasures—some of the happiest years of my life. Yes, He is the only unchanging entity, and the Rock which we lean on.

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