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I once heard about a farmer who was continually optimistic, seldom discouraged or blue. He had a neighbor who was just the opposite. Grim and gloomy, he faced each morning with a heavy sigh.
The happy, optimistic farmer would see the sun coming up and shout over the roar of the tractor, “Look at the beautiful sun and clear sky!” And with a frown, the negative neighbor would reply, “Yeah—it’ll probably scorch the crops!”
When the clouds would gather and much-needed rain would start to fall, our positive friend would smile across the fence, “Ain’t this great—God is giving our corn a drink today!” Again, the same negative response, “Uh huh, but if it doesn’t stop ‘fore long it’ll flood and wash everything away.”
One day the optimist decided to put his pessimistic neighbor to the maximum test. He bought the smartest, most expensive bird dog he could find. He trained him to do things no other dog on earth could do—impossible feats that would surely astonish anyone.
He invited the pessimist to go duck hunting with him. They sat in the boat, hidden in the duck blind. In came the ducks. Both men fired and several ducks fell into the water. “Go get ‘em!” ordered the owner with a gleam in his eye. The dog leaped out of the boat, walked on the water, and picked up the birds one by one.
“Well, what do you think of that?”
Unsmiling, the pessimist answered, “He can’t swim, can he?”
Why is it that most of us have a bent toward looking at so many things in life from a downcast perspective? It is certainly not that we doubt that God is good, or that He shows His goodness in innumerable ways. It is that we just seem to struggle to believe that His goodness is shining upon us. It seems that this is never truer than in the ministry of the local church. Regardless of how many ways in which we experience God faithfully supplying our need and revealing His glory to us, more than enough can be found to remark on how things are not as good as they should be or certainly not as good as somewhere else.
While Christ is an inexhaustible source of goodness and we will certainly never arrive at perfection until He returns, we should not fail to recognize all the things He is doing among us! Pessimism may perk the ears of most, but God delights in our giving thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
It seems as though our struggle against discouragement is often one of perspective. While we all pray for the obvious outpouring of God’s blessings, we fail to have the perspective that God is working in mighty ways even when we cannot see it. One example of such an instance in Scripture is in 1 Kings 19:1-18. In this passage, the prophet Elijah is discouraged and lamenting before the Lord the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his path. Fleeing for his life from evil queen Jezebel, he has nearly given up all hope that God is working in the lives of His people. In answer to Elijah’s discouragement, God responds in a powerful, but surprising way. The New Bible Commentary captures it well.
God's response was to pass by while Elijah stood at the entrance to his cave. Wind, earthquake and fire manifested themselves in succession, but God is said not to have been in any of these. Then a different phenomenon followed. The translations a ‘gentle whisper’ and 'a still small voice' (rsv) do not do full justice to the enigmatic Hebrew expression, which may be better rendered 'a brief sound of silence'. Although the text does not explicitly say so, it implies that God was at last passing by in the silence which followed the storm.
These events provide a vivid demonstration that God is not always at work in ways which are visible and dramatic. He may choose to be present silently. Elijah's diagnosis of the situation he had left behind was therefore challenged, for God can work in ways which even his servants cannot detect.
It is within this same passage that God discloses to the dejected prophet that not only is God working in others, but there were 7,000 others that were being faithful to God!
So, as we pray together for God to move mountains, only to realize perhaps a couple of buckets of dirt move, perhaps we should remember that God is answering prayers in ways that might not always be visible. Or when we give to the limits of our finances and our energy, only to see the bills mounting and the work yet done, perhaps we should remember Christ is meeting our need with His limitless supply and working through us with His unstoppable force. And when we preach and invite and plan with all of our power, only to have none respond, may we remember that God is working in ways that we cannot always see.
And one glorious day, when we will no longer need the right perspective (for our eyes will clearly see), we will pour forth unending praise for all that He is always doing!
Optimistic for a reason,
Jason