Peace, Life, and Opportunities

Posted by Jerry Lopper May 12, 2008

One of the fascinating aspects of life is the regularity with which life presents us with opportunities to experience who we really are. Some may view these same situations as frustrations when the unexpected shows up and disrupts what was planned.

Forty five year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc was a happy nine year old when the horrors of the Vietnam War changed her peaceful village life in a horrific way. You may have seen her in a famous, Pulitzer Prize winning photo. Phuc is the little girl running naked with her skin burning from a napalm bomb attack.

"Napalm is very powerful, but faith and forgiveness are much more powerful," Phuc was quoted as saying in a recent speech in Columbus, Ohio (The Columbus Dispatch, May 8, 2008, by Meredith Heagney). Though faced with the horrible deaths of family members and years of painful skin surgeries, Phuc is a happy, peaceful person. How Phuc thinks about what life presented her is captured fully as she asked her audience, "Please don't see her (herself, the girl in the picture) as crying out in pain and fear, see her as crying out in peace."

Most of us don't have to go through events as traumatic as this woman, but we all have the opportunities to react to the unexpected by being true to what we believe, what we value, and how we choose to view the world.