“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take. Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. Then you will have healing for your body and strength for your bones.” (Proverbs 3:5-8 NLT)
In a recent Breakpoint article John Stonestreet wrote: “Ellen Meara, health policy professor at Dartmouth, told The Washington Post, ‘There’s something more fundamental about how people are feeling at some level. … People are feeling worse about themselves and their futures, and that’s leading them to do things that are self-destructive.’”
Have you noticed it? In stores and restaurants, even just passing people in my neighborhood, I’m looking into people’s faces, but it’s like nobody’s home. An emptiness, loneliness, lack of life is becoming, not only evident, but glaringly undeniable. What’s happening? Could it be pessimism?
G.K. Chesterton wrote in The Everlasting Man, “Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.”
Or as journalist Andrew Sullivan summed up in a piece written about the national opioid epidemic: “America, having pioneered the modern way of life, is now in the midst of trying to escape it.”
It’s strange that I haven’t made this connection before now, but I absolutely love to worship the Lord with my spiritual family. What a contrast to the faces of gloom and despair I see from day to day. Joy, genuine, heart-felt celebration of the life of the living God made manifest in and through His Holy Spirit as He pours Himself into each of us. Perhaps there’s never in history been a more vital time for children of God to align themselves with a vibrant fellowship of God’s people. This is not a time to do life alone.
It’s not: “Let’s trudge disheartened through life as best we can, dreading every second!” It’s “Let’s open our hearts to Jesus and celebrate His life in us by joyfully and enthusiastically joining with our brothers and sisters in lifting praise and adoration to our Savior!” Worship is an antidote to pessimism because it gets our eyes off ourselves and helps us to focus on Who is really in control of our destiny.
John Stonestreet continued: “It may be that, faced as we are with decreasing life spans, a life of purposeful, selfless faithfulness could have an incredible impact. The greatest commandment, Jesus said, is to love God with our whole selves—hearts, souls, minds, and strength—and to love our neighbors as ourselves. As we obey, we turn both upward and outward. The upward turn both reveals and offers purpose. The outward turn offers a joy that is far better than momentary pleasures.
We’ve never lived in a more needy time. People are wasting away as surely as the children of Israel in the wilderness. Discouragement, fear, and fatigue plague not just the US, but the planet. Why? Because for years we’ve done nothing short of push God out of our lives. Demanding to do life “our way,” and now it’s as if the Lord is looking down upon us, smiling and saying, “How’s that working out for you?”
We, God’s children, are the “salt” and “light” of the Lord. Listen child of God, no one is going to do for the people in your spheres of influence what only you can do. There are lost, lonely people in whom you can create a thirst for God, for whom you can shine the light of redemption, pointing them to their only hope of true life.
Please don’t buy into the world’s “gloom and doom!” Be instead a light on the proverbial hill showing the way out of pessimism and doubt into the glorious light of life found only in Jesus.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 