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Last Thursday, I was driving to campus and was only a few blocks away when I heard a thump-thump-thump sound coming from the back of my Jeep.
Great, a flat tire. This was just what I needed.
I had given myself thirty minutes to eat lunch before my 12:30 class and now I would get to change a tire instead. To make matters worse, it was raining heavily.
So I found myself on the ground, in the rain, cranking on the handle of a jack to raise my Jeep so I could change the tire. There is no other way to describe it: It sucked. These are the kind of things that just tick a person off and leave one in a poor mood for the rest of the day.
As I was changing the tire in the rain, I began to wonder what effect this was going to have on my day. Would I let this put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day? More importantly, what effect would it have on my walk with Christ?
It happens to the best of us. We sleep in, we have an argument with a friend or we fail a test. Whatever it may be, it takes a toll on us mentally. We have very little control over negative experiences that make us at least a little stressed out and down. We can however, control how it affects our relationship with Christ.
Scenario one: I wake up, take a hot shower, have breakfast with a friend, walk to class in the warm sunny weather and learn that I excelled on a recent exam. My response is to praise God and thank him for all that he has blessed me with.
Scenario two: I wake up late, don't have time for breakfast, walk to class in the cold wind and learn that I did not do so well on a recent exam. My response is to not praise God, and I'm not thanking him for the blessing he has given me. At that time I do not feel particularly blessed and I feel I have very little to be thankful for.
Has God blessed me any less in Scenario One than he has in scenario two? Does God love me less in Scenario Two than in Scenario One?
No. I am equally blessed in Scenario Two as I am in Scenario One. God's love is never changing and is therefore the same in both scenarios.
With this being true, why do I act differently in either scenario? If God loves me the same in each scenario, I should praise him nevertheless in each scenario.
This is much easier said that done.
I am trying to live my life in such a way that I praise God through the good days and the bad days.
So, returning to the flat tire situation. When I asked myself how this would affect my day and my walk with Christ, I realized I had to decide if I would still praise God that day.
I decided, as I was kneeling down on the wet ground getting soaked, that I would still praise God. The love my God has for me is too great to be stopped. I was not going to let anything, even something as frustrating as a flat tire in the rain, keep me from praising God for the love that he has for me.
When I stopped while changing the tire and prayed to God saying that I still knew his love for me and that I was still going to praise him today and always - even when things are exactly going the way I intended. When I prayed, a peace came over me and all of a sudden everything was fine.
Yes, I was still soaked. Yes, my tire was still flat. And yes, I was still going to miss my class. None of that changed.
But what I realized with that prayer was that God is still with me and that he still loves me. Knowing that made everything more than fine. I reached the point of telling myself this: whatever came my way that day I was still going to praise God for his love. Nothing can stop that.
When a bad day has found you and things aren't going your way, don't let it stop you from praising God. God's love for us never changes and we should not let anything keep us from loving him the same every day.
