Mindset August 17, 2014

1I lift up my eyes to the hills.
    From where does my help come?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.
Psalm 121:1-2 (ESV) 


How can you live sweetly amid the vexatious things, the irritating things, the multitude of little worries and frets, which lie all along your way, and which you cannot evade? You cannot at present change your surroundings. Whatever kind of life you are to live, must be lived amid precisely the experiences in which you are now moving. Here you must win your victories or suffer your defeats. No restlessness or discontent can change your lot. Others may have other circumstances surrounding them, but here are yours. You had better make up your mind to accept what you cannot alter. You can live a beautiful life in the midst of your present circumstances.
J.R. Miller*

There were several items in Mr. Miller's paragraph that caught my attention.

1.  "You cannot at present change your surroundings."  This statement is not necessarily true.  Surroundings can be changed.  Jobs can be quit.  Spouses divorced.  Houses sold and bought.  Church  membership moved.  But what I have discovered over the years is that many times external changes done for the wrong reasons are temporary fixes at best.  All too often the same disquietude, discontent, and dysfunction is present at the new job, with the new spouse, in the new church.  "Living sweetly" is more a function of the internal rather than the external.

2.  "Here you must win your victories or suffer your defeats."  I will do _____ when_____.  Tomorrow I will _____.  If only _____ then I would be able to _____.  That is such wrong thinking.  If God calls, appoints, demands then it is to be done now, not when circumstances changes.  We live in the here and now, not in tomorrow.

3.  "You had better make up you mind. . ."  Living a life of acceptance and contentment is not a matter of feeling like it.  We choose our attitudes.  Understandably there are circumstances which will greatly affect our emotions and mind, but at the end of the day, how we feel, what we think are ours to choose.

Take it from a professional worrier.  Agita, anxiety, and apprehension do not change the situation.  The make one tired, cost one sleep, and play havoc with the bowels, but they do not improve jobs marriages, or churches for the better.


Daily Strength for Daily Needs, Mary Tileston. August 17, 2014