Psalm 40:2 “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”
Due to God’s faithfulness, constancy, and promises, King David knew he could always bounce back from the grimmest of circumstances – even when they were of his own doing. Similarly, our lives are usually not so much determined by what happens to us but by how we react to what happens to us, by the attitude we bring to life. A positive attitude can often cause a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events, and outcomes.
Comedian Jerry Clower tells a story about Uncle Versie Ledbetter who had a mule named Della. One day Della fell into a cistern that Uncle Versie had accidentally left uncovered: “Uncle Versie had a problem. There was his best mule down at the bottom of that cistern and no way he could get the mule out of there. He didn’t want her to stay down there and starve to death, so he decided he would get a shovel and cover her up. It would be cruel, but it wouldn’t be as cruel and inhumane as to let Della starve to death in the bottom of that deep cistern. Uncle Versie took a shovelful of dirt and threw it down into the cistern and every time a shovelful of dirt hit old Della, she’d shake the dirt off and stomp on it… shake it off and stomp on it… and it wasn’t long before Della had shaken off enough dirt and stomped on it so that she was high enough to jump out of the cistern.”
Hopefully as you review some of the darker experiences you’ve been through in your life, you will be able to see that you unknowingly adopted Della’s attitude. If not, then choose to adopt that attitude from hereon in when clumps of dirt land on you!
Lord, help me use the dirt to grow. Thanks that ultimately you lift me out of the slimy pit. Amen!
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