Give and Take

“I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!” Job 1:21

Hey y’all! Welcome to 2021… the year of hope. I know I’m not the only one hoping that 2021 is better than 2020. Hoping we can come back outside. Hoping we can get a firm grasp of COVID-19. Hoping that health, wealth, prosperity and peace be granted to my family and friends. Hope that love will conquer all. But while having that hope and Satisfaction in how I left 2020, there’s still a tinge of Sadness over what has been left lingering before us. We lost so much last year it was hard to go into 2021 feeling anything but Melancholy. You know, that feeling when Satisfied and Sadness combine and you want to appreciate where things are going even though you’re reminded where things have been. There’s been a lot of Melancholy in our lives lately.

So how do we get through it? I want you to think about someone who knows all about the emotional rollercoaster that is Melancholy. Think about Job. Out of all the faces in the bible, his sticks out the most when dealing with this emotion. He was living his best life, things were great, and he loved God. Then, with the blink of an eye, it was all gone. And yet, he still found a way to praise God through it. How????? I’ve told myself many times I don’t think I could ever be Job. His plight in life was much more than the average person could bear. But he said something that makes Melancholy a little easier for me. He said “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I will be naked when I leave. The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!” (Job 1:21) In the middle of everything, Job remembered that God gives and God takes, every fortune that we have comes from Him, and because of that, the pressure is not on.

Too often we sit in our emotions and think that everything is our fault. But I don’t believe that it is. Yes, we have choices and choices have consequences, good or bad, but some things happen out of our control and the only thing we can do is respond. The response is what we are in charge of. I’ve made wrong response choices before, as I’m sure all of you have, and while I wasn’t responsible for the act that brought on my frustration, I am fully responsible for how I react. When my Satisfaction in life is faced with something that brings on Sadness, I don’t have to reply in Anger. and neither do you. Job was often tempted to respond in Anger to the trials he faced, but he practiced emotion regulation like you wouldn’t believe. Never doing something that he would regret, he expressed himself and allowed the fault to lay where it should, not with him. You can do that same thing. If you allow God to be responsible for the things that bring those adverse feelings around, and trust Him to help you make sense of it all, then Melancholy can shift away as quickly as it sets in.

So as you jump into 2021, even though we know those Happy New Year toasts hit different, remember that the fate of your 2021 is first in God’s hands. And no matter what He allows you to face, it’s His choice. Your choice is in how you respond.