An area church's Pastoral Counselor preached an excellent sermon on the topic "Overcoming Pessimism." (1) The message heightened my awareness that feelings of optimism are not always automatic responses to life's events. Often we are overwhelmed as stress takes its toll and a positive outlook on life is difficult to maintain.
There are many guidelines provided by the secular world on ways of overcoming depression, managing stress, and dealing with anxiety. Helen Steiner Rice reminds us of our spiritual resources in the following poem. (2)
Faith to guide me along my way,
Understanding and wisdom, too.
And grace to accept what life gives me to do."
- Helen Steiner Rice
Her poem echoes the words of the Psalmist who said, "Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!" (Psalms 31:24 RSV) How can we use these resources to learn to "accept what life gives me to do" with hope, love, and grace in our world today?
The first step is to have courage. Courage is the ability to face life without fear. Courage is displayed through determination, a boldness of spirit, and resoluteness to conquer the task or circumstance. With courage, we face life with confidence and are more self-reliant. This self-reliance helps us to emphasize the positive since we feel in charge of our life. It provides us with a resiliency to the forces of life. We are reminded from the Psalms: "This is my comfort in my affliction that thy promise gives me life" (Psalms 119:50 RSV).
To hope is to want or wish for something with confident expectation. Hope gives us reassurance that everything will be all right. We would all like to believe that "hope springs eternal" in our "hope for every day,” but hope is often not a natural instinct. (3) It is a quality of life that must be nurtured. And this nurturing is found in the Scriptures: "And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in thee" (Psalms 39:7 RSV).
The terms hope and faith can sometimes be used interchangeably. Faith defined further, however, expresses a belief and trust in God. The Apostle Paul defines faith in his letter to the Hebrews as ". . . the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Heb.11:1 RSV)
Paul also writes in his letter to the Corinthians about love. "Love is patient and kind [. . .] Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things [. . .] So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13: 4, 7, 13). The Psalmist proclaims: "I trust in the steadfast love of God for ever and ever" (Psalms 52:8 RSV). Let us then also use the eternal light of love to show love for others that is patient and kind, and trust in the steadfast love of God for ever and ever.
The next step is to have wisdom. Words from Proverbs tell us "Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gets understanding [. . .]" (Prov. 3:13 RSV). Wisdom is insightful understanding of what is true, right, or enduring. If we have a better understanding of events and situations that impact our lives, we can see more positive solutions.
The final step to nurturing hope and optimism is "grace to accept what life gives me to do." It is this grace that is our daily challenge. How do we develop this grace - the skill of avoiding an improper, inept, or clumsy course in life?
Living a life of pessimism could certainly be viewed as a clumsy course that grace could help to avoid. A pessimistic life is filled with hopelessness and certain sadness. This is a kind of life that negatively affects everyone else. It will be especially hard to escape a pessimistic attitude if we let all of life's problems become permanent, persistent, and personal. (4)
Permanent problems last indefinitely without any real resolution. Persistent problems pervade all of the areas of our lives. And personalizing problems make us wonder "Why me?" as we fail to realize that many events are entirely out of our control. Although life's events are not always within our control, our attitudes (grace in accepting the situation), however, toward these events are in our control. We can choose to see things in a positive way, or we can be self-absorbed and maintain negative feelings. We need to remember the Scriptures promise: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" (Psalms 46:1 RSV).
A national insurance company published a health tip recently with the caption "Chronic Stress Can Change Your Personality." The accompanying picture shows the usual amiable beagle Snoopy with his eyes crossed and teeth barred. (5) When we let our reactions control us, we too can change into a virtually unrecognizable stressed Snoopy.
The Christian faith itself in an example of positive thinking. Jesus set the example for us throughout his ministry. The late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale established an entire ministry on the concept of the power of positive thinking. (6) The power of positive thinking has influenced inventions, success in athletics, and miraculous healing in medicine. (7)
We now know the steps to follow to have hope and optimism to help us live a positive life. The brightness of the arc of spectral colors of a rainbow gives God's assurance that the thunderstorm is over. Can we brush the dark clouds from our minds and catch a shining rainbow of hope to give us an assurance that there are brighter days ahead? The silver lining is there if we will just look for it.
REFERENCES
(1) "Overcoming Pessimism". July 10, 1994 Sermon, Dr. Jim Hightower, Pastoral Counselor, First Baptist Church, Huntsville, AL.
(2) Rice, Helen Steiner. Helen Steiner Rice Daily Devotional Calendar. Gibson Greetings Co. 1992, Sept. 23rd.
(3) Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1992: 301.6.
(4) Seligman, Martin, E.P. Learned Optimism. New York: Pocket Books 1992: 44-52.
(5) "Controlling Stress" Stay Well Series. Met Life Insurance Co., NY:NY, Time July 11, 1994, page 61.
(6) Peale, Norman Vincent. The Power of Positive Thinking. Pawling, NY: Foundation for Christian Living (1978).
(7) Baggett, Hudson. "The Power or Positive Thinking." The Alabama Baptist August 11, 1994, page 2. |
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