Privileged?

A great, great friend of mine, Rich Peterson, is a great pastor and is the father of my boss/pastor Jeff Peterson and he is currently the pastor to seniors at RMCC. Rich just celebrated a couple of years ago being in the ministry for over 50 years and in those 50 years he still has an amazing outlook in life and ministry. Every time he speaks of something he has to do or something he got to do he says he had the privilege in doing it. I didn't get it at first, I didn't realize it at first. As a matter of fact it wasn't until working with him for over a year and a half on staff with him before it clicked. We were discussing in staff four questions which I will be blogging about shortly. And after we would answer the four questions our pastor would exhort us and bring up some highlights of our past year that he had thought of.

It was as Rich was speaking that he said as a pastor to seniors he has to do so many funerals. He said that he had the privilege of doing eight funerals this year. I thought how could anyone think that a funeral is a privilege. Then I began to look back over the past 18 months at the moments that Rich would chime in, few and rare, but when he did everyone would listen. Rich has an enormous amount of wisdom with his 50 years of ministry and he spent many years as the Superintendent for the A/G in Illinois. I realized that almost every time Rich would speak of an event in his life like; speaking at a funeral, visiting someone on their death bed, telling a family member that their loved one has a terminal disease, at the bedside of an elderly man or woman as they draw their last breath he would share about the privilege he had.

This has caused me to think, think about how little value I put on the general things I do. How do I begin to look at each person, each event, each interruption in life as a privilege? I don't want to think about this in 50 years, I want to be that person now in this era of my life. I want to begin a new chapter in my life, I want to turn the page that is completely blank, dip my pen in the ink and begin developing a life of looking at every thing in life as a privilege. Let the penmanship of my life begin to write about the privileges I have.

Let me ask you something. What has happened lately that was not a privilege that you could renegotiate your thoughts and change your perspective and realize that you were privileged by the interruption in life?

How do I operate in 'privileged mode'?