The ponderings this week comes via Mrs Jesus Follower:
The Happy Game’s not Working ☹
I’ve always been a ‘Pollyanna’. You may not know that story but, to put it simply, I think my role in life is to make everything and everyone happy.
I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to change things; to make everyone happy; to make things look good. Life’s not like that.
I’m not sure how often you’ve read Ecclesiastes but I usually find myself having a little chat with wise old Solomon when I read this. Everything wasn’t really that bad, surely; there was always something to look at that could cheer us up. But, as I sat at the dining room table a short time ago, staring out the window and wondering what the next few years held for me, I thought it really is just plod, plod, plod. And that pretty much makes up the routine of a day.
You may be in an exciting and challenging place in life at the moment but, essentially, you’re not much better off than the rest of us who get up go to work, look after kids or plod through our routine and go back to bed at the end of the day. Maybe Solomon had it right after all.
I’m currently reading through Ecclesiastes again but as I sat there at the table the words ‘under the sun’ suddenly leapt out to me. Of course, that’s it!
It’s all about the choices in life we make. If all we know and live for is this world that exists under the sun, so to speak, we’re going to be frantic to live every minute to the full, worried there won’t be another. We’re going to do everything we can to preserve this life, to discover the secrets to eternal youth, go to extremes to try and preserve the planet or find another one to accommodate us. Life becomes a little frenetic as we look for answers.
But my light-bulb moment was seeing that we all have a choice to look at everything from the perspective of life here or to know it and to live it from what I call the Colossians 3 perspective. I’m aware that my mind works in rather a simple fashion but there are so many times when I say to myself, you’re not sitting in the right place…get back to your Colossians 3 position before you go any further.
And so, yes! Oh, wise Solomon! You’re so right. What meaning and purpose does life have if we just exist here on this earth; what purpose is there in keeping on keeping on without knowing our Lord Jesus Christ and the reality that we are now hidden in him who is seated at the right hand of God…above the sun; above and beyond this universe?
And my mind couldn’t help flipping across to one of my favourite passages from Ephesians where we’re reminded of this position we have as a child of the living God. For God has raised us up; seated us with Christ…where? In the heavenly realms in him! Wow!!
And this is the only place we can truly know that living hope we talk about each week!
Mmmm, so…am I going to drift through the rest of the day looking at life as those who have no hope or live it from the position that is rightfully mine; a child of God, hidden in Christ far above the despair and monotony of the day?
Slowly pushing my chair out from the table, I walked to my desk…and wrote this 😊