The Fast
I’m almost through day five and I was hoping to have some huge chunks of wisdom to hurl your way, would you settle for some observations? Negativity saturates our society and parts of me. It is so deep I don’t even recognize it until I am sliced by the Word and it spills out of the marrow, when the muscle and hard bone has been stripped away. I truly thought that positive is just the opposite of negative. That is not exactly true. You can slap gooey positive words on any situation, but it doesn’t change the important part- the inner man. In fact, my cousin Liz posted on facebook some comments that could be positive or sarcasm-
- Those jeans look great on you
- You look so skinny
- Your hair looks great
- I’m sooo happy for you
The Word digs deep to expose those presuppositions that took up residence in my early childhood and tenaciously hold on to the inner-me, the one that only Jesus sees.
“In a person’s head are two voices. The first, the positive voice, speaks all the good about each situation, seeing the world through a positive perspective. The second, the negative voice, speaks all the bad about each situation, seeing the world from a negative perspective. One cannot eliminate either the negative voice or the positive voice entirely, but he can learn to turn up and down each of them.”-Resolved 13 Resolutions for Life by Orrin Woodward
This weekend Rafal brought me some ripped tiny pieces of paper from his journal, just little inspirational sayings that were pre-written. Here’s what one of them said:
“Happiness is like a field you can harvest every season.”
It sounds simple, right? Choose happiness? I’m not going to go all Pollyanna on you, more like the patient in Screwtape Letters. Thankfully, I know I am in a war. It is a battle fighting negative thoughts and choosing positive on purpose. Happiness can be harvested when the right seeds are sowed. I can’t sow negative and expect a harvest of positive.
More tomorrow!