You have heard me quote Trevor Hudson's observation that every person we meet stands beside "a pool of tears". Every person you will ever encounter - including people who seem to have it altogether - has known sorrow and has been wounded by their pain.
If everyone has a reservoir of pain, how is it then that some people manage to remain so positive, even joyful? I agree with Trevor's quote, but it is worth remembering that each of us also has a unique pool of joy. Granted, in especially hard seasons of life it may be difficult to describe that pool - to articulate what makes us experience joy - but it is there. Could it be that people who seem to cope so well with adversity do so because of a daily choice to access their pool of joy, rather than their pool of tears?
Maybe you have heard the Native American legend which says that inside each of us, a fight is taking place between two wolves - a bad wolf and a good wolf. A young Cherokee boy once asked his grandfather, "which wolf will win?" and the old man replied, "the one I feed". We choose each day which wolf to feed.
Paul, writing to the Philippian church from the misery of his jail cell in Rome, issues an instruction to Christians to choose joy - "Rejoice in the Lord! Again I say rejoice" (Phil 4:8). Taking this seriously doesn't mean living in denial over the reality of our pain, but it does mean choosing daily to draw from our pool of joy, which, we may find, will change the trajectory of our lives. It will strengthen the good wolf :)
If everyone has a reservoir of pain, how is it then that some people manage to remain so positive, even joyful? I agree with Trevor's quote, but it is worth remembering that each of us also has a unique pool of joy. Granted, in especially hard seasons of life it may be difficult to describe that pool - to articulate what makes us experience joy - but it is there. Could it be that people who seem to cope so well with adversity do so because of a daily choice to access their pool of joy, rather than their pool of tears?
Maybe you have heard the Native American legend which says that inside each of us, a fight is taking place between two wolves - a bad wolf and a good wolf. A young Cherokee boy once asked his grandfather, "which wolf will win?" and the old man replied, "the one I feed". We choose each day which wolf to feed.
Paul, writing to the Philippian church from the misery of his jail cell in Rome, issues an instruction to Christians to choose joy - "Rejoice in the Lord! Again I say rejoice" (Phil 4:8). Taking this seriously doesn't mean living in denial over the reality of our pain, but it does mean choosing daily to draw from our pool of joy, which, we may find, will change the trajectory of our lives. It will strengthen the good wolf :)