Today is my grandson's birthday. The big 2 for Liam. Oh, if we could live with the cheerfulness of a child.
Liam has always been the child of laughter and smiles. He's the child that reminds the soul there's always something in which to smile. His smile can overcome in me any kind of rainy day storm that's brewing around me.
See, Liam is that cheer my heart so often needs. No matter what the day has held for me all it takes for my heart to soar is to see his beautiful smile. Often my daughter will send a video of him giggling at something that tickles his soul. All it takes to bring a smile is opening that video and there I am partaking in a cheerfulness that charges my heart toward cheerfulness of such joy tears flow!
Even with difficult circumstance that takes place in our lives and the turmoil in the world around us we can remain cheerful because of our Lord. He has overcome this world and all the dread it contains. Right? In this hope we can live with cheerfulness.
Get this! He has deprived this world of its power over us. Yes! There's no circumstance in this world that can take away my salvation. None that can separate me from my Savior. In that alone is enough to live cheerfulness!
Something happens to us along this journey. We allow this world to steal away our cheerfulness, that cheerfulness my grandson carries in his smile. We stop enjoying life as we get wrapped up in all that's wrong, losing track of all that is right and good. It's all enough to change our attitude from cheer to disappointment, right?
Take for instance a car's battery. To make it connect and start it has to have a negative and a positive charge. You cannot have two negatives and expect something extraordinary to happen. But you put together a negative and a positive and Shazam!!
Ever have a battery that's low or dead? I've gotten in my car, turned the key to ignite and there in the middle of my plans is a flat line that drives me to lay my head on the steering wheel in disappointment. It certainly puts a damper on the attitude. Makes you question why you even stepped foot on the cool of the morning floor.
We too can become like a sluggish battery or one that is dead. We become filled with such sadness, anger, and all that can cause our attitude of cheerfulness to change into a heart flat-lined. To put it bluntly. We get fed up. We grow tired of trying. We begin to see the ugly before we ever see the beauty. Been there with me?
What next? What happens when we give our car a start up and nothing happens? We ask for help. We flag down someone with battery cables to help us get a new start. We lift up the hood, connect the positive and negative and soon that battery that once had no charge is now turning over. We keep the charge running and before we know it the battery is fully charged and we are once again ready to roll.
Pretty amazing how a charged battery can put a smile on our face and give us a start filled with cheer!
"A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones." Proverbs 17:22
"The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep." John 10:10-11
"These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." John 16:33
