Day 2543 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.


Proverbs 17:22 NIV

As I've mentioned in at least few prior posts, I do a lot of watching the world around me. I take notes. I pay attention. I'm always studying life and how people live it because I know there's always something to learn. So I keep note of things that make sense to me, things that I think may help me be a better person. And I also make note of things that just don't seem right, things that I don't want to do. In all of my studying here lately I've noticed a really big commonality in our society.

People are just unhappy. It's maybe something that I only notice because I'm one of those people who can read a room and I just seem to have this innate ability to sense when something's off. I can tell when people aren't feeling good. I can sense when someone's angry or upset. And I just really notice that more than ever here lately. People are unhappy. They're angry. They're gloomy. It's like they're all just walking around waiting for their demise around the next corner.

I don't get it. Sure, life ain't perfect. Every day brings us challenges that we'd rather not deal with. We all go through tough times that push us way outside of where we're comfortable and require more than we have to give. Life just doesn't stop handing us lemons. But rather than even considering making lemonade, it just seems that most people have decided to suck on the sourness and allow it to eat away at any semblance of joy or happiness that may have once existed in their lives.

But just because life isn't always perfect doesn't mean that it's anywhere close to bad. Trust me, if you've kept up with reading my posts every day then you know I have no problem finding and pointing out the bad around us. I've even gone so far to wonder if I'm simply a cynic. But even though I can see the seemingly endless amount of bad in our world, I know there's good too. There's still plenty to be happy about, to be thankful for, things that just bring a smile to your face.

It's sad that our world seems to be losing the ability to find joy in life. I guess it's one thing to notice all the bad around us, but an entirely different thing when you let it in. We talked about that yesterday and I think that's unfortunately what's happened to a whole lot of folks. Our lives are a direct reflection of what we let into our hearts. There is plenty of both good and bad in our world, it's just up to us which we allow ourselves to focus on the most.

Friends, life may never be this perfect picture that we've painted it to be. We may never get everything we want or have everything go our way. But that shouldn't be our goal anyway. Our goal should be to use our time here in the best way possible. And you can't convince me that walking around like we're dead without any inkling of hope or happiness is using our limited time here wisely. We each have a chance to make a real difference in this place. Maybe all it takes is a smile. A kind word. A nod of the head to the person stuck in traffic next to you.

We can choose to be part of the gloom that surrounds us, or we can set our sights on doing something different. We can let the evils of this world seep in and start crushing us from the inside out. We can let this dark place steal away our joy and leave us miserable. But we can't forget that it's a choice that we have the right to make. We can choose to be happy even when life isn't okay. We can choose to let the negativity just keep right on rolling by us rather than inviting it to hang around for a while.

Make that choice. Choose to be happy in life because the other option just isn't going to help anything at all. Life is going to be what it's going to be, but it doesn't have to lead us to a place that we don't want to go. We don't get a lot of say in many things, but the amount of joy in our hearts is one thing that we can control.

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