Rules and Fire Ants!

Ya know, all my life I have been surrounded by rules. Rules subjected on me, by me and for me. Some were for my own good, some for others' own good. Now that I am older, and I won't say how much older, I think a lot about rules. I think mostly about keeping them and lately about how much better I am at keeping them than others. There, I said it. I'm better than most. Or am I? Hmmm.
God created us in His image but he also created us in love. At first he subjected us to all these rules; rules he knew we couldn't keep. Gee, that's obvious, I mean, he's God. We're like ants in comparison. However, we are beloved ants.
Now, where I live, we have lots of ants. Red, vicious, fire-hot biting ants. They come with a delux mount of sand or dirt, anywhere from three feet high to four feet in diameter; again, depending on the amount of dirt and of course the size of the colony.
I don't hesitate in telling you that I kill these venum inducing, itchy irritating varments. I kill them with a huge, victorious smile on my face. Just thinking about it makes me smile.
I say this because of another favorite word of mine called "perspective". Our perspective of fire ants is not so good because they bite us. All you have to do is stand in the proximity of an ant pile and, well, they'll come after you. They hurt us even when we aren't planning on getting a gigantic bag of fire ant killer and pooring over their unsuspecting souls. (boy, I sound vengeful)
That's one of the reasons why we kill them. There are others, like short circiuting your a/c units or your pool filters and other such electrical apparatus.
Perspective is important because we view the ants as a nuisance, which they are; however, just as we are like ants to God, he does not see us as a nuisance. In fact, it is just the opposite.
John 3:16, the most highly quoted scripture of all, states that God loved the world. The world would qualify as everything in and of the world, including fire ants (and us, of course).
When we loose sight of God's perspective, we lose sight of God. When we allow that to happen, our perspecitve gets skewed. Now who wants a skewed perspective? Not me.
In light of that, we all have perspectives that have become cloudy and jumbled. Even the best of us who keep as many rules as possbile (religious rules or not) still have faulty perspective.
Here's why.
It's not about the rules. It's about God.
It's not about my perspective. It's about God's.
Now, maybe I won't stop killing fire ants, but I sure will try my best not to "kill" my fellow "ants" because I find them irritating for not following the rules. Whether I like living in the same colony with all the other ants God put me with (or I put myself with) I need to have God's perspective of each little red, biting ant. My focus on the rules needs to be filtered with my focus on God and his perspective of me. Other wise, my pride will overcome me and the rules will be all that matter. Now that's a loss of perspective.