“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.” ― William Shakespeare

I’m living in a world where I have so much more control over things. All the technology at my fingertips allows me to find the quickest route, the best deal, and the latest news. Information and knowledge is everywhere. From all over the world and in just a few minutes, I am able to find answers to almost any kind of question. How much easier it has become to stay in touch with people. We can locate long lost friends and relatives with just a few taps on our keyboard. Searching was never so easy. When you stop and think about it for just a minute or two, we have made a wonderful life for ourselves haven’t we?

Then why am I feeling so awful about how things are going? Why is it that too often my day to day seems like an out of control roller coaster ride? When I reflect, how did I end up where I am, not where I was so certain to be heading?

If you are a follower of Christ, there’s always going to be a disconnect in your experience of life. There will be an external situation that you wake up and find all around you every single day. “The weatherman said it was going to be clear and sunny today! Why all the claps of thunder?” Then there will be the internal/eternal reality that you carry around within and use like a gyroscope to keep a sense of balance and orientation.

“The wizard [of Oz] says look inside yourself and find self. God says look inside yourself and find [the Holy Spirit]. The first will get you to Kansas. The latter will get you to heaven. Take your pick.”― Max Lucado

I am so disappointed at days and months, even years, spent praying and stewing about my life’s direction. Then one day I’m spiritually awoken to realize I’ve been hunting around in a bookstore trying to purchase a box of Cheerios. How could I have been so confused for so long?

What’s the big lesson that I’m learning again and again? So much wasted energy being unhappy with circumstances or the actions of others. So much all around me that I will never be able to change. All I can change is myself. Let God manage the rest. After all, the unhappy and unplanned situations I step into are wonderful opportunities to let faith spill out and be seen for what it really is and how it really works.

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”                                                                                                               ― Wayne W. Dyer

It doesn’t matter where you are. God knows where you are. The work of God, the deep purpose of your life can be accomplished where you are. Use that “gyroscope” and get some balance back into your life. You just have today, make it count:

• Be present in each moment, chaos or calm, and find that truth that you need to live out in front of others. You don’t need to jump into that argument, you need to turn the other cheek.
• Replace frustration, anger and fear with a happy demonstration of hope. Do this all the time until it becomes your nature and reputation.
• Turn so that the eternal situation within you can be seen more clearly. Sometimes this means to turn away from what you desire. Sometimes it means to turn toward the need of another. It can mean to not look so closely at the faults of others. At other times it might mean to turn back upon yourself and reflect on your own weak habits before becoming critical of others. Turning can be a very healthy practice.
• Stop searching for your own benefits like happiness, fulfillment, success, or acceptance. Instead work hard to find ways that provide these same gifts to people who cross your path each day; friends, acquaintances and strangers alike.

The works of God are waiting for you and I every single day, waiting for YES. 

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?

Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.

If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”  ― Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. God will make this happen, for he who calls you is faithful.  – 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24