“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.”
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.”
~~~Jeremiah 29:11-12 (ESV)~~~
“For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome. Then you will call upon Me, and you will come and pray to Me, and I will hear and heed you.”
Each of us has problems to deal with. This is life. The real question is how do we deal with these problems? How we deal with them determines the quality of our life.
Though I can’t say I recall ever hearing my deceased mother-in-law having said this, but my husband has said she had said “life is just a series of problems to be solved.” This statement does sound like her.
The phrase “bitter or better” is such an accurate description of how effectively we use our problems in life. We can choose to learn from these problems and navigate through them much easier than the alternative. If we choose to be bitter about having problems in our life, then navigating through them becomes more of a struggle.
Life is about living and living is full of learning opportunities. I have always used the phrase “stepping stones” to describe how I see life and the opportunities it offers. Every person, every book, every situation is full of opportunity to use all our senses to experience life. It’s a moment by moment decision how we choose to experience life.
It’s about choosing to be happy or unhappy, full of life or full of death, eager to grow or anxious to die; it’s about your cup being half full or half empty. And it’s also a choice between good and evil, and ultimately trusting God or not.
As Nick Vujicic so famously has stated “Your attitude determines your altitude”. In essence our negativity fuels more negativity or our positive outlook creates more positive outlook.
The real question is why anyone would want to be negative, living in doubt, in bitterness, without hope. Why would anyone want to waste their life on just surviving and fighting their way through the problems of life when there is such an amazing alternative? Life is just too short to be wasted.
I am also not advocating living a selfish, glutinous life of over indulging in all the amazing and wonderful things life does have to offer. More importantly I am certainly not advocating tossing aside ones moral compass and going off the deep end, choosing to live a life void of common decency, honorable character, and morality.
Some people spend their whole live running. They run from anything they cannot control, they run from anything they don’t like, they run whenever their lies have begun to catch up with them, they run whenever they are feeling bored, and they run when genuine intimacy and true love are reaching out to them.
The point is, it’s a choice how each of us views life and ultimately how we live it. Bitter definitely in not the way to go. Better opens up the door to unlimited possibilities. Better definitely is better!
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us….but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” Romans 5:1-5, 8 (ESV).
Photo Credit: Rudy & Peter Skitterians
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