A Different Response
“Life is ten percent what happens to us and ninety percent how we respond to it.”
- Charles R. Swindoll
These words have been echoing in my head and heart as I have looked at the world that surrounds us right now. There is so much happening and we have so little control over it all. The ten percent is raging and it feels so easy to react in fear, in anxiety, and in anger.
I have found myself asking what it even looks like to be at ease right now? Looking at all that is happening to us, how should we respond?
In Philippians 2:14-15 Paul writes,
“Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation. Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky.”
When Paul is writing this, he doesn’t even mention the ten percent. He is solely focused on the ninety - the response. And how does Paul say we should respond? Without grumbling or arguing.
At first glance, these may seem a little bit out of nowhere. If you are familiar with Paul, you know that he says a lot about love and a lot about joy and a lot about hard work. So, to me, these two things feel like they come out of left field.
Why grumbling? Why arguing?
The reason is simple. In this world grumbling and arguing are the natural response to hard things. When people are put under any sort of pressure, complaining and trying to be right are our unfiltered reactions. Negativity and aggression naturally flow from hard situations, but Paul doesn’t want Jesus followers to simply be like everyone else. He wants us to have a different response.
If I am being honest, sometimes I forget there are people in the world who don’t have the same hope I have. There are people in the world who don’t constantly have access to the Prince of Peace. There are people out there who don’t know the Savior who has overcome the world. I start to feel convicted when I realize I am reacting the same way a person who doesn’t know Jesus reacts.
This is what Paul is trying to get the Philippians to avoid.
It doesn’t make any sense that a person who has hope, peace and a personal relationship with the Savior of the world would experience hard things and react the same way as someone who doesn’t. But we find ourselves there all the time, don’t we?
Grumbling, complaining, arguing, anxious, fearful, frustrated, raging, hopeless.
These are the natural responses.
But because of what Jesus did for us we aren’t stuck here. We have the option to respond with faith, with peace, with hope, with love and with strength. We can respond this way because we know who we belong to.
And when we respond this way, Paul says we will shine like stars in the sky. People who do not have the hope that we have will see our response and know something is different.
In this world everyone is searching for hope and reaching for peace.
We have the answers that they are looking for.
We have access to the Savior of the world and because of that, we can be at ease.