Sunday, January 18, 2004
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.
(Proverbs 3.5
NRSV)
The respected psychologist Martin Seligman has studied this problem many times in his research on what he calls Learned Helplessness. What he has discovered is that the major difference in whether we are successful or not in life is not what happens to us; it is how we interpret the things which happen to us--particularly the bad things. If, when we have a setback, we interpret that setback to mean that we are a loser, a failure, that we are somehow hopeless and that our lives are never going to work out no matter what we do, we are probably going to give in and give up. But if we interpret a setback as momentary, a fluke, only a pebble and not an insurmountable boulder, then we are more apt to seek to turn life's lemons into lemonade.
Isn't this what the life of faith is really all about? Faith acknowledges that we are going to have hardships, setbacks, failures, heartache. Faith contends, however, that in the sum total of things, "Somebody up there loves us" and that come what may, if we trust God, life will work out.
Loving God, my hope is in you. Help me to always trust in you. Amen.
