There’s plenty to occupy the mind of the pessimist. A bleak economy. Continued political division. A unending pandemic with inconsistent messaging and consequences that never seem to end. Bad news around the world. Cultural decline. You name it – and it’s happening in very real ways.
If you are pessimist by nature, you’ve got to be feeling a little smug right now. It doesn’t help that the current political and media culture thrives on who has the worst news to reveal.
I can hear the nay-sayer now. “I told you so!”
Getting some people to see any glimmer is nearly impossible. They have the uncanny ability to stare down the brightest light until they force it to go dark.
I worked with a coworker who just brought everyone down with him. He was certain the world was against him, or at least plotting against him. There was never a good day without a pain, a bad relationship or a fight to pick. Darkness followed him.
I have a relative who would rather see the sin than the grace, the wrongs more than the rights, the punishment over the salvation. The joy of heaven is drowned out by the shouts of finding yet another fault in someone.
I have people who pick apart every word I write on this page, finding error with me, or the church, or the world. Bleakness seems to be their only friend.
But I’m being honest here. I often take some comfort in my own grumblings and revel in my mumblings. I have some fellow soldiers in this battle to the bottom, and we all drag our feet and become slaves to the steady, droll drumbeat of an apathetic world. After all, it takes zero work to look at the dark side of situations.
Some Scripture needs to be understood or translated or studied. Some just stands on it’s own, like Phillipians 2:14. “Do everything without complaining or arguing.”
Unsettling? Try downright frightening for some of us. To live and speak everything without complaint or argument punctures a hole in the Bad Ship Lollipop. It sinks the comfortable, negative world. It suddenly changes the world view away from me and my cranky attitude.
“Be positive? How?”
It starts with a different vision – a way to see things that are unseen. To see this world through the Father’s eyes. It means finding good in the bad, hope out of the hopeless, and blessings out of brokenness.
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