FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 2024 - SUNSHINE, TOXICITY, LIVING WATER

 FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 2023 LIVING WATERS / SUNSHINE / JOY, JOY, JOY

On Fridays, I generally write about spiritual things.

Yesterday, I wrote about the heliotropic effect - the idea that sunflowers face the sun - that the sun’s warmth attracts us, and we grow because of the sun.

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and thundered, “Let anyone thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this, He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him would later receive. Until then, the Spirit had not been given since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” (John 7:37-39)

Let’s take two opposites - light and dark. In our natural world, most animals (and most people) live in the daytime - in the light, but some animals (and some people) are nocturnal - and like the night.  

Where do I get my strength? Where do I get my attitude? Where do I get my grace?

I get my strength from the “Light.”   I get them from my “rivers of living water that flow from within me.”  

*****

Are you living in a toxic, salty, hostile environment?  

Find somebody positive to talk to in that environment. If all positive people leave the toxic environment, it will become totally toxic. There are times you need to “bloom where planted.” 

An old Amy Grant song is about going to the “mountain top.” We need to be light for the world. We need to let “our little light shine.”

If you are in a toxic environment, the tendency is also to become toxic. Do not repay evil for evil!!! Return love and good for evil!!!

Stay true to being heliotropic and “sunny.” Don’t go to the salty side. Don’t join in the fray when you hear talk from people going down that toxic fray. Stay quiet.

And, if the toxicity gets to be too harsh, you should move on.

When you say something negative and lose your temper, you have to do the next right thing and apologize. Don’t make excuses. Take the “high road.”  

*****

Ultimately, you need to be positive - and let that river of living water flow out of your “inner-most being”!!

“Let the Sun Shine in”

“I’ve got the joy, joy, joy down in my heart (3x), and I’m so happy.”

LOVE WINS

LOVE TRANSFORMS

Karen Anne White, January 5, 2023