Over the past few years, I have become more and more discouraged by the things going on around me. I only check the news to stay abreast of the major current events and most of those seem to be bad news. If I’m not careful I find myself getting caught up in all of the negative, and it affects the way that I live, think and act.
As I write this blog I am sitting at my parents’ house with two of my three beautiful nieces. They are running around and getting into everything, and I couldn’t be happier just watching them play. Before coming here, I was at the hospital to see my newest niece, Amanda Joelle. She is absolutely gorgeous, healthy, and an answer to numerous prayers.
It’s amazing how things seem to just melt away when you focus on the beauty in life instead of all of its problems. I struggle, at times, to focus on the good. One of my goals this year and in the years to come is to focus on all of the good and not the bad. I hope that you will take time over the next little bit to look at all of the good things that have happened.
As Pastor Nick always says, if God never blesses us again, He has already blessed us too much. It is our job to not only accept the blessings but to take the time to enjoy them and be grateful for them. I want to take a second to encourage you to join me in my quest to focus on the good in life. It’s not always easy with all of the news that we are inundated with, but it will be well worth it in the end.
~James
Thanks for the reminder James. As always, your blog seems to hit home for me.
Thank you for your thoughts, James! In Proverbs it says that a merry heart has a continual feast and that a merry heart does good like medicine. In Phil 4:8 it tells us not only to think of true, honorable, pure, lovely and excellent things, but to DWELL on them! Positive thinking God’s way combats the world’s negativity, and wins hands down!
Ted, I think that we are alike in many ways. Maybe it’s the engineer in us, who knows.
Denise, I love that verse. I would have to say that positive thinking is one of my biggest struggles. I am a worrier. Callie helps to even me out some, though. God knew what he was doing when he picked her as my helpmate.