Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. – Colossians 3:2
Bad things happen. No matter what or who causes it, they just happen. The result of bad things happening is that most people get sad and depressed. They get down in the dumps.
Today, most people think of a dump as a place where all the rubbish is taken to. When you’re down in the dumps all you see is rubbish in almost every direction. To your left, to your right and when you bow your head down in misery, rubbish is all you see. The longer you stay down there, the more rubbish appears. The rubbish of wrong choices, unhappiness, negativity, and anything else bad that occurred in your life are added to the dump keeping you down there. You move things around a little, but it stays with you. You become so focused on what is around and below you that you forget to look up.
Some people get so busy looking at the dump they fail to realise that it doesn’t go on forever. There is a limit to how big a dump can get, and it will never block out the sun completely. All it takes is the courage to lift your head up and see the top of the heap. Up there you will see Jesus, the true Son, shining and beckoning you to get out of the dump. His hand is reaching for you.
On your way out of the dump, you will have to deal with the rubbish. Rubbish will be added to the pile as you go up and you will need to push it out of your way to clear the path to the top. It won’t be easy but then life as a whole is never easy even if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. Nowhere in the Bible does it say life will be easy when you become a Christian, even Jesus had to deal with the rubbish that was thrown his way. Jesus had his eyes and mind set on heavenly things and was able to overcome. Like Jesus, we too can deal with the rubbish by keeping our eyes set on what is above.
Here on earth, we will always have dumps. Just when you get out of one, you can easily find yourself in another. We can’t avoid bad things, but we can get out of it as soon as we can. If we let the bad keep us down, we will never get out of the dump. God doesn’t want us to stay down in the dumps. He wants us to stop looking at the mess and start seeing what is above us…hope. Hope is what get us out of the dumps. We eventually see the positives and potential for our future.
Whenever you get down in the dumps just remember to look up. Once you look up and see Jesus waiting for you at the top, that pile of rubbish won’t be so big. Setting your mind on heavenly things is a goal that no amount of rubbish can ever cover up.
Originally published September 2018