A little food for weekend thought--
Anybody need a little advice on how to make yourself (and quite a few others) miserable? Here are some hilarious, but ouch-worthy, suggestions (a dozen resolutions to be exact) from Elisabeth Elliot:
1. Count your troubles, name them one by one—at the breakfast table, if anybody will listen, or as soon as possible thereafter.
2. Worry every day about something. Don’t let yourself get out of practice. It won’t add a cubit to your stature, but it might burn a few calories.
3. Pity yourself. If you do enough of this, nobody else will have to do it for you.
4. Devise clever but decent ways to serve God and mammon. After all, you’ve got a life to live.
5. Make it your business to find out what the Joneses are buying this year and where they’re
going. Try to do them at least one better even if you have to take out another loan to do it.
6. Stay away from absolutes. It’s what’s right for you that matters. Be your own person and don’t
allow yourself to get hung up on what others expect of you.
7. Make sure you get your rights. Never mind other people’s. You have your life to live, they
have theirs.
8. Don’t fall into any compassion traps—the sort of situation where people can walk all over you.
If you get too involved in other people’s troubles, you may neglect your own.
9. Don’t let Bible reading and prayer get in the way of what’s really relevant—things like TV and
newspapers. Invisible things are eternal. You want to stick with the visible ones—they’re where it’s at now.
10. Be right, and be sure to let folks know it. If you catch yourself in the wrong, don’t breathe it
to a soul.
11. Review daily the names of people who have hurt, wronged, or insulted you. Keep those lists
up-to-date, and think of ways to get even without being thought of as unreasonable,
uncivilized,or unchristian.
12. Never forgive a wrong. Clutch it forever, and you’ll never be unemployed. Resentment is a
full-time job.
If you're like me, you both laughed...and cringed. Thank goodness we've never been guilty of any of those. Sigh.
On the other hand, we could listen to the Apostle Paul's simple, short, but brilliant and life-changing words: "Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks."(I Thess.5:16-18) Now that's a recipe for joy--not just for ourselves but for those around us. Why don't we go with those rather than the "dirty dozen?"
By the way, I just learned from David Jeremiah that the shortest verse in the Bible is not actually "Jesus wept." (John 11:35). That's only true in the English versions of the Bible. In the original New Testament Greek, guess what the shortest verse is? "Rejoice always!" in I Thess.5:16.
Yes sir, I can remember that!! And as David Jeremiah reminded us: "Because Jesus wept, we can rejoice." Because Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, because Jesus wept at the horror and destructiveness of sin and death, and because Jesus then conquered that sin and death at the cross to give us eternal life, we can rejoice!!
Folks, no matter what's going on in our lives, Jesus died, rose again, and He is alive...so that we might live, really live. And live forever and ever. It's time to put away grumbling, comparing, self-pitying, worrying, resenting...and rejoice! Or as Paul says, "Rejoice always!"
To God be the glory.
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