I am reading the fascinating autobiography of Elizabeth Murray, Breaking Night, during which she tells her story of going from homeless to Harvard.  She recounts growing up in the Bronx with parents whose drug addictions were so great that all the family’s scarce resources went towards feeding and nurturing the addiction and not feeding and nurturing the 2 children.

Murray and her sister went for days with no food to eat while her parents shot up around the clock.  Because living with hunger had always been her reality, she believed that this was just how it was,  that she would always be hungry.

Everything changed when one day she met a boy who found a way to survive on the streets.  He hustled money by offering to pump the gas of complete strangers for a tip.  In so doing, he made enough money to buy food and things he wanted.

As Elizabeth Murray watched her friend collect money from these people at the gas station, the author tells of realizing for the first time that she didn’t have to be hungry every day after all.  She had believed she was powerless over her situation, and that she would always be hungry, until that moment when she saw the possibility of a different reality.

She writes, “And I began to wonder what else wasn’t set in stone.“

What an empowering realization that she could change her situation- and what a great question to ask ourselves!

We can each ask, “What do I believe is set in stone that maybe really isn’t?”

Some things literally can’t be changed. They are what they are:  our race, our past, our parents, for example.  But when you think of it, there really is very little that is truly set in stone about our lives.  We can so easily accept our limiting circumstances as set in stone  because we just can’t SEE another reality.

Now I want to be careful here.  What I’m not suggesting is that this is the quick ticket out of a difficult situation.  It’s likely  there is a way through such situations that we just haven’t seen or realized yet, that we probably have more tools and resources at our disposal than we’ve realized.  We aren’t to simply flee from difficult situations, but with God’s help find the power to go through them towards  a better reality.

I think it’s a question to at least ponder.  Jesus came in part that we might experience the abundant life. Maybe one of the reason’s we don’t more fully experience the abundant life is because we have simply believed, often unconsciously,  that there are things that are set in stone that really aren’t.

May we intentionally ask God to help us to SEE those areas of our lives that he wants to bring more to.