What is right with your life? Have you ever seriously contemplated that question? We tend to dwell on the negative. “What is wrong with my life?” is a much easier subject to deal with, or so it seems. That is what I hear more than anything else, rather than “What is right with my life?” We seem to enjoy “pity parties,” especially ones we throw for ourselves. I don’t know why we enjoy those so much; no one else even enjoys attending them with us. Most of the time they avoid us when we are in that state of mind!
During this time of COVID-19, of staying at home, going to work, or deciding if we really need to go out shopping or to wear a mask, or not to wear a mask, these things could be enough to make us all have a pity party. But don’t! We are alive! We have decisions to make. Celebrate! You still have decisions to make!
So instead of a self made pity party, ask yourself instead, “What is right with my life? What is going on good in my life right now during all that is going on around me.” You just might be surprised at the answer. Now I can hear some of you groaning already, saying, “This guy has no idea what my life is like, how can he say that there is anything good about my life?” If you are saying that, you haven’t really thought about the question! What is right with my life? Think about it for a few minutes before answering. Then get pencil and paper ready to right it all down. Because I can guarantee you the list will be longer than you can remember!
Number one is, “Are you alive?” If you answer no to this one, skip the rest of the article and get someone to call Graham Funeral Home for you. If you are alive, that is one very big point in your favor, because if you are alive, you can think and reason and plan. If you can do those things, then you can discover all the other things that are right with your life. Now get out of that negative thought pattern. Only think about those things that are right in your life. Make a list. Don’t just do that mentally, but write it out, and put it away. Add to it as you think of things that are right in your life. You will be surprised at how long the list can get.
We tend to think so negatively that we can’t see many of the good things in our everyday life. For example, I talked with a man years ago that hated his job. He thought that everything wrong in his life revolved around his job. I counseled with him and helped him to see it was not his job that was the problem but rather his attitude. There were a lot of things that were right in his life that he could not see, simply because he was only looking at his job. He had a good job. It didn’t make him rich, but he made enough to support his family, it paid the rent, it paid the utilities, it provided clothes and food. It allowed him to go on vacation; he had a car, and he kept gas in it. He was able to have children and provide for them. He and his wife had fun times with their children and the list just went on and on and on.
We get in a rut so many times with our thinking, that we cannot see anything but that one big “whatever” in front of our mind at that moment. We dwell on that one bad thing or thought, rather than on the myriad numbers of other things that are good and right in our lives. Go on, force yourself. Think of all the things that are good or right in your life. Don’t leave anything out. The truth of the matter is that you will not be able to write them all down! You won’t have enough time, because the list is too long!
For you see, just as an illustration, the fact that you are breathing leads to the fact that you are healthy enough to breathe. Your lungs are working properly, which means your heart is pumping blood as it should, and your blood is flowing as it should to enable you to have sufficient oxygen in your brain cells to enable you to have sense enough to think the thoughts that you are thinking and ability to write them down which involves even more right things happening in your arm, hand and fingers along with their corresponding ligaments, tendons, muscles and tissues. Do you see what I mean? There is not enough time or space for you to record everything that is right in your life.
Accentuate the positive and forget about the negative. Life is too short. God does that with us. In Micah 7:19 we read, “You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”
What is right with your life? Believe me; you will be surprised at how many things are in the answer to that simple question!
Brad Morris, a retired minister, originally from Georgetown, served as a pastor and then as a missionary in Costa Rica and Ecuador, can be reached at cbrad7777@gmail.com. He has been in ministry for 50 years and a columnist for 17 years, 13 of which have been for the Times.
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July 22, 2020 at 11:00AM
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Rev. Brad Morris column: What is right with your life - Charleston Post Courier
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