It’s remarkable how changing circumstances can affect us emotionally.
Not remarkable in the sense that it really shouldn’t, more remarkable as to how it affects us in differing ways.
There are some people I know whose whole mood lifts when it’s pay-day and that mood sags towards the middle of the month when they have two weeks or more to wait until the next pay day. There’s the whole Friday thing where some look forward to a time when they are not working … as in not at their place of employment for their employer. The mood is high on those occasions and then on the Monday morning the mood is not as buoyant.
There are elements of that which I can empathise with. I’m grateful for the emotions I have and how they’re useful at times to express for myself more than anyone else what certain things in life mean to me.
What I’ve appreciated, recently, however, is how hope is powerful during times that can be particularly challenging. Those challenging times could leave me looking down, moping and scrambling around for whatever scraps of self-gratification I can find to lift my mood. Hope does wonders in stopping that.
How it works is that, Jesus presents me with what life is in Him. How it comes from what He did on the Cross. How it thrives because His Spirit lives in me. How it will reach it’s conclusion in the end when this corruptible will pur on incorruptibility. That hope says that it’s not worth dwelling in the moping and scrambling. That does a disservice to the reality of my position in Christ. It suggests that having the Spirit of Christ within and the unsearchable riches to be found exploring the life of Christ is insufficient.
It’s not just an individual and personal hope. It influences relationships and conversations and activities and projects. It’s constantly seeing the good in what’s going on and propelling me towards the good to come.
Where my eyes would look down, the hope keeps me looking up.
(Photo by Banter Snaps on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 