Day 11 - Life is Precious

​This has been a long stressful week, but The Lord has taught me a lesson, life is precious and should not be taken for granted. As I was visiting my brother in the hospital seeing him on life support and life-saving measures was a humbling experience for me to say the least. My brother who I had grown up with and all I ever wanted to do was be like him, hang out with him and his friends and just be accepted by him. What can I say, when I was little he was my hero, and I looked up to him. Seeing him this week on a ventilator was a hard but humbling experience and made me realize a few things about humility.
Life is precious, as the bible says in James, “yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” I think what James is trying to say here is that life is short and we do not know what tomorrow will bring. We don’t know the plans that God has for us, and everything can change in an instant. We should live life to the fullest and stop focusing on the negative that is in our lives and focus on the blessings. We are a blessed people! Even in the valley where you might be today, some blessings are being poured over you. Are you stuck in the negative and missing out on the blessings that are right in front of you? I know I often overlook them. There is so much good right in front of us that we miss out on and overlook. I had a youth who I was counseling one time, and he felt like the world was falling apart, and all was going bad, and there was nothing good in his life. I had him perform an exercise, I had him make two columns on a blank sheet of paper. One was for the bad things in his life, and one was for the good. I gave him 10 minutes to fill out as much bad as he could and then gave him another 10 minutes to fill out the good in his life. When the 10 minutes for the good was over, he was still filling out good things in his life, and his good list far exceeded the number of the bad list. I anticipated this outcome, but he was shocked. I told him when things are bad to take this list out and look at all the blessings that are right there in front of us up for grabs, but we miss them stuck in the negative. Maybe it is a pride thing, which is the opposite of humility, or perhaps a cultural thing. Either way, we must learn to humble ourselves and focus on and hold on to the blessings.
So today are you still prideful and holding on to the negative or do you need some work in this area? Are you able and willing to say, “I receive the blessings and the good” and let go of the bad in your life?
My prayer is that even in the storms, and the storms will come, that you can remain humble and focus on Gods promises and His provision, even in the storm. The storms will pass, but will you let them go and look toward the positive, or will you hold on to the past and the negative?