Written by: Ray Baker and comments by Jane Wheeler
Ever wake up and feel like today is not your day? Maybe it’s because it’s Monday, or maybe its because today is just not your day.
I read this and thought this guy is speaking my language!
When I have a day like this, I would prefer to roll over and go back to sleep, or simply lounge on the couch all day. Most people don’t have the luxury to say "not today world", by literally avoiding the real world, and blocking everything out by pretending everything is fine.
I seem to be learning how to convince myself that the couch is often in my best interest a fair amount of days.
When I have a day like this, it seems to snowball as the day goes on. Like everything you do is wrong, or sometimes everything other people do is wrong, you tend to focus on the things that bring out the worst in you. Sometimes this happens and you don’t even notice it, like the joy has just disappeared from you and you cannot get it back.
I liken the feeling to a blown up ballon and you poke a sharp small pin into it. It does not "pop" rather it starts to deflate, slowly, and before you know it, it is flat and lifeless.
When you paint a wall a dark color, something like navy blue, it seems to bring out all the flaws when it gets covered over with the dark paint. Those little imperfections on the wall seem to stand out for some reason once that dark paint hits it. You want the wall to look new and perfect, but those flaws underneath that get hit with darkness just pop when you look at the wall. Its enough to make you want to give up, when you put in so much work to cover up this old wall and all these flaws just seem to show even more now.
I actually have painted one wall in my bedroom dark green. I love it, but it is going to take another coat, a third, the flaws are showing....
Our lives can sometimes reflect a lot like this wall does, if you don’t take the time to tend to things that are underlying initially. If you start with the hole in the wall, cover it up with some plaster, sand it, prime it and then paint it, it will look pretty good. But if you just slap some plaster on there and paint it, chances are that once the dark paint hits the wall, it is not going to look good. It’s important to take the steps to fix things properly, in a way that when any darkness hits it, you won't even recognize that hole was there before.
When we live our lives without putting God first before we do anything, generally that starts to lead to our joy diminishing, then things seem to take a turn for the worse.
Things start to annoy you a little more, people start to work against you, everything just seems to spin in the wrong direction.
My day felt exactly like that yesterday, a wrong spin. All in all not a bad day but things were just seeming to work against me. People not returning phone calls from businesses, businesses with no stock or in one case - no service. I had asked to have something delivered in a week. I was told, "well we probably can, as long as our delivery driver doesn't call in sick" and the cashier, kind of giggled at that. Why was that delivery person still working there? Was I going to trust this order to actually arrive? We went out to the store's yard to pick up something from the outside storeage buildings and we waited in the car to be served so we could know what direction to head in. No one came, Glen went towards the little building that the yard guys stay in and there were 2 of them, less than 5 feet from the vehicle, just sitting there. They did not appear to be wanting to work so we had to disturb them and convince them otherwise.
On a day like this you almost have a guarantee to have computer issues - oh boy, I had mine. Today it seems to be working, yesterday? There was talk of it becoming a skeet throwing item.
I cannot say I was having God thoughts around this time, probably a hard no. I cannot say I was having any positive thoughts either. It was so easy to let this discouraging cloud wreck my entire day! It did not have to, but I let it. It clouded the whole day.
Its important to start your day with God in your thoughts, live our daily lives with God in our thoughts and finish our day with God in our thoughts. Things do come up that get in the way and sometimes we don’t recognize the fact that we’ve been steered off course and our thoughts might be directed in the wrong direction and then we let it govern out whole day and outlook.
Maybe not a bad day, rather a bad experience and I sure could have prayed for a few more folks than I mumbled about.
2 Corinthians 10:5 - NIV
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
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