POSITIVE THINKING?

PR EVANGELINE CHEONG

“Why can’t you think more positively?” my friend asked me with all curiosity. I smiled and replied, “but let us be realistic instead? Things are really hard now.” Positive thinking can help us, to not get stuck in the negative things yet it may not be too helpful to (as a song goes) “always look at the bright side of life!” Especially when life is not so rosy, and all of us stuck waiting for a pandemic to end, it is hard to stay positive, to suck it up and keep going.

So I’m glad that Scripture shows us that we do not need to suppress our difficult emotions, or close our eyes to hard and trying circumstances in our lives. Our Lord Jesus Himself went through challenging situations, being “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3)

David says in Psalm 42:11:

      Why are you cast down, O my soul,

      and why are you in turmoil within me?

      Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

      my salvation and my God. 

David sings of his difficult circumstances of enemies oppressing and taunting him (v3, 9-10). He talks about crying day and night (v3), he keeps asking God “why?” (v9) Yet there is no hopelessness as David is brought to turn his eyes to a loving God, who “pours his unfailing love upon me, and through each night I sing his songs, praying to God who gives me life.” (v8). The positive thinking that David turns to is not located in an arbitrary, random belief in fate or chance but in the sovereign and holy God who had shown David in the past that His love is real and His presence is near. J A Motyer in his commentary on this verse tell us that “personal faith maintained in the midst of depression by deliberate focusing of memory on God.”   

Positive thinking of this world may help us get through each day but it is only by looking to God alone that can bring us through any suffering the world throws at us. We can sit and tell God of our pain, anger, sadness, grief and suffering. We can “hope in God” because of His faithfulness in our lives in the past difficult times. How are you feeling today? How has God been faithful in the past when things were tough and difficult?