A Thought For The Week Of August 5

"Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord." (Ephesians 5:19b) Earlier today, I was involved in an exchange with a friend in which I suggested that one of the main problems we face in our society is that people are far too negative. It seems that we're always willing to criticize; we're all too often to jump when we experience something we don't like - but we don't balance it enough by affirming the things that work, the things that bring us joy; the things that fill us with a sense of peace and happiness. Maybe that's just human nature. And I suppose that it's because our gut reaction is to simply sit back and quietly appreciate the things we like, but to jump and lash out at the things we don't like. It's a shame, because it does make for a lot of negativity in the world. As I was thinking about that, I found those words from Ephesians 5. In those words, we find that joy and happiness are things that need to well up from deep inside us. Those of us who are Christians have a lot to be joyful about - especially the love that God gives us and the freedom we have to enjoy our life of freedom. Unfortunately, even we Christians fall down a lot on that point and we let our gut reaction to the things we dislike rule us. I see far too many Christians who are so consumed with criticizing other Christians (and never mind those who aren't Christians at all) for not being "true" Christians that there really doesn't seem to be much music coming from their hearts. Negativity may come from the gut, but we need to let our hearts rule, and as children of God our hearts need to be filled with joyful song so that our first thought is to celebrate that which is good, rather than simply to criticize that which displeases us. Have a great week!