Wednesday, December 31, 2008

2008 Year in Review

Nothing happened this year, either.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Chicken Soup for the Soul

I haven't written a blog post for a while; writer's block, I suppose. I've been focusing my energy on organizing the music for the Generation of Youth for Christ conference, coming up just next week. I still feel somewhat overwhelmed with what needs to be done to get everything ready, but at the same time I'm not exactly sure what that is at this point; put out fires wherever they occur, I suppose, and see what happens when I get there. 

I really ought to get out of bed and get to work, but I felt compelled to finally write another blog post, lest my readers (whoever they are!) get discouraged that this blog hasn't been updated for so long that they quit checking it. Today's topic: emotions. 

The title of this blog evokes feelings of comfort food and nice puppy stories, but that's not what I have in mind. I was thinking today about the soul's emotions and how we care for them, compared to our physical weaknesses and how we care for them. I think that emotions are like a cold or a flu. It's inevitable that at times we may feel under the weather. If you're a fairly healthy person and do all the right things, it may be less often than otherwise. We are taught to eat healthy foods and avoid sugar and take our vitamins, dress warmly, get lots of exercise and rest, wash our hands regularly, and avoid getting close to people who are sick to avoid catching something. If we do these things, our chances for getting a cold may decrease, and we may be able to heal quicker and not lose as much productivity. However, I don't believe there's ever been a person on earth who has been so healthy and done all the right things so that they didn't ever have a day where they just felt icky and feverish and had a cough or sore throat and wanted to stay in bed. It's just the way things go. 

Likewise, our emotions can be controlled--and not controlled--in the same way. If we eat healthy foods and avoid sugar and take our vitamins, dress warmly, and get lots of exercise and rest, it helps to strengthen our minds as well as our bodies so that we can have clear minds to make good decisions and deal with things. Very importantly, we also ought to keep our hearts clean as well as our hands, and avoid contact with influences that will contaminate us. However, as colds, emotions and temptations do come into our minds without our consent; it's just part of life. 

I was listening to a sermon from Audioverse yesterday, and it mentioned that it's not our emotions that define us, it's what we choose to do with them. Too many times, people think that just because they feel something, that means they have to act on it, which is often times not the right decision. (I'm talking about the kind of emotions that could lead us to make the wrong decision, such as anger, unsanctified attraction, jealousy, despair, etc.) In this case, it helps to think of these emotions as a cold--do the best you can to get over it, but understand that you just have to let it go. And just like the times when you are lying in bed with at fever of 100 degrees and feel like you can't remember what it was like to be well and will never be healthy again, you just have to realize that with time, you'll be all back to normal again.