(…continued) Consider one example. In the book Radical Gratitude author Ellen Vaughn described a study that measured the day to day happiness of several hundred people. The people were divided into two groups, and everyone was given a simple assignment. They were told to keep a journal every day of things that happened to them. Those in Group One were told to list only good things that happened to them that day. Those in Group Two were told to list only bad things. Therefore, in order to fulfill the assignment, they had to be aware of, remember, and then every evening list all the GOOD, or all the BAD, that they faced each day. The attention of one group was therefore constantly focused on the positive, and the attention of the other group was constantly focused on the negative. Along with that, the researchers had developed ways to measure in each person their level of contentment, the quality of their relationships, and their overall feeling of well-being and happiness. You can guess which group was the happiest. Striving to focus on the good things in their lives made the members of Group One much happier.
The Bible tells us how to do that when it teaches us to be grateful. Our life and every good thing in it is an undeserved gift from God, says the Bible. Not only that, but even the bad things that happen to us can be used by God to make us stronger and more faithful people. And, if things aren’t going well for you now, just hang on, God’s Word also promises that a whole eternity of blessings await you. This, says Paul, is a hope that will not disappoint you. Certainly, one can have a positive outlook on life without believing in God. But the most solid and long-lasting foundation for such an attitude is gratitude to the Giver of every good gift. There is great wisdom in the old hymn, “Count your blessings, name them one by one, count your blessings see what God has done.”
This is just one example of how our hearts and minds and lives can be shaped by God’s word. Our own inner voice may tell us something very different as we look around at what we have and don’t have. Our inner voice is more likely to tell us to be jealous or resentful, always asking, “Why is this happening to me and why do they get all the breaks?” You know very well how that inner voice works. But God’s word opens up to us a much fuller understanding of His blessings for us, both now and forever.
So look to Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to teach and guide and save you.
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Psalm 103:2 — Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits.
Romans 5:3b-5 — …Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
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O God our Father, who invites us to pray, and grants what we ask; hear me struggling in this darkness, and hold out to me your hand. Send me your light, and recall me from my wanderings. Amen.
–St. Augustine
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C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, 1952:
The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him (Christ) take us over, the more truly ourselves we become… He made us all. He invented— as an author invents characters in a novel— all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him.
It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Alcohol will be the real origin of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.
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