Perception

How do you perceive things? Are you a sight person,sound person or thought person?
Do you know that if two people see an accident or crime both will come away with different stories and descriptions of what each feels they saw or heard and what things seemed most important to them.
I was once told there are three sides to every issue.Your side,my side and the truth.
Now this does not mean what you perceived is not truth it just means we both viewed things differently.
When I think of the Apostles I think of 12 men with 12 different personalities and although most of them had similar back grounds,educations and religious upbringing,after the Ascension they all went into the world with different types of ministries.
All of these men sat in the presence of Jesus.
They ate with him,were taught by him,witnessed miracles and each came away with a different perspective of what they heard and saw.
Now they all got the basics right,evident by the Gospels themselves and their similarities,but they all felt differently about their own ministries depending on where they were.
Some felt that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Torah,some that the Gentiles needed to be a part of their ministry,Some that even the Romans who crucified Jesus truly got right and felt sorrow after the deed was done,some felt that the Jewish leaders were to be blamed,some that they should not.
We are all products of our past and our personalities we tend to stress what we feel is most important to us and the world around us.
We as church members have this same issue.
Some people are very much into traditions and exactness,crossing the t's and dotting the i's are very much a part of their religious life and belief,others are less formal but still as spiritual and correct in their faith.
Many times it surprises me how Fr.Peter can read the Gospel on Sunday morning,during liturgy and each of us can come away with a different idea of what we think is important.
I'll bet if Fr. handed out a piece of paper and asked each of us to write what we heard, most of us would have the same basic story but each of us would perceive what we heard differently.Every message that was gained would be different.
This is not a bad thing,this is what make us who we are and gives us the ability to enter the world with our spiritual message for the people around us.
It is important for us to embrace each others differences,even when we don't always agree with them.We live in a world that needs lots of ministries from lots of people with the right basic ideas but different teaching styles.
God says that he needs many field hands because the crops are ready but the hands are few.
In order to assist with the reaping we all need our own personal tools to work most efficiently in the field we are given.