A Better Word
Being a positive person is more desired than being a negative one. But, have you ever met an annoyingly positive person? I have. They were so positive I became very negative about my opinion of them.
How is a Christian to keep a positive disposition while being firmly grounded in reality? The answer lies within this question, “which reality are we referring too?”
One thing I love about scripture is it tells actual history with stark honesty. When situations were bad, the Bible tells us. When people suffered, the Bible highlights it. When hero’s of the faith acted shockingly wicked, the Bible tells the story without holding back. So, is the Bible negative?
There is another thing I love about scripture. We not only read about messy history, we also see the curtain pulled back on how God was moving and working towards His glory and our good in the midst of it all.
In scripture, a “positive” person is not someone who refuses to see dark or negative things. A “positive” person is someone who refuses to believe darkness is the only reality or has the last word.
I think a better word for what God calls us to be is hopeful.
No matter what comes our way or happens in the nations of the world, we know that there is another reality working and moving. His name is Jesus.
We can look at the depressing realities of this world (and we should do so because God himself modeled this to us in scripture) but we refuse to allow it to be the full or final story. A hopeful person believes the reality of Jesus is just as true and real as anything we can see, touch or feel.
Writer Anne Lamott said it well, “Grace always does bat last, and the light always overcomes the darkness--always, historically. But not necessarily later the same day, or tomorrow after lunch.”
In this Advent season, Wendell Berry reminds us, “advent happens in the darkest days of winter. It gets darker and darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.”
God always appears even in the darkest stretches of our lives. Hope always is there. Even when we can only see part of the story and that part is hard and painful. There is another reality and we hold on to Him.
Even if the wait to see light, redemption, and healing lasts for a lifetime, we can remain hope shaped people.
Ultimately, this lifetime is not all there is and death never has the final word. No matter how dark the days get or how real the pain feels let us shout into the darkness, “Jesus will have the final word! Grace and healing will ultimately win!”
People of true hope in a world of false positivity and anxious negativity—that’s who we are.
“Death used to be an executioner. Now, because of the resurrection, he is just a gardener. You don’t bury Christians; you only plant them. Our bodies do not become rotting corpses, but germinating seeds. No journey to the grave is one way.” - Sam Allberry.
