“The Pessimist Sees Difficulty In Every Opportunity. The Optimist Sees Opportunity In Every Difficulty.” ~ Winston Churchill
We all know the people. Some of them may even be friends. You know about whom I speak. The person who sees more doom and gloom than anything else. The person who, when presented with an idea or a task will quickly enumerate the many ways that it cannot be accomplished or why it is not a good idea. The person that does not want to venture into anything new and unknown. The person that always keeps the rest of the group from advancing. Yes. That person.
If this were confession time, we would also have to admit that there are times that person is us.
The pessimist is a hard person to have as a family member, a friend, a co-worker, or an employer. The pessimist will do nothing but drag everyone down. The pessimist will kill all enthusiasm and sabotage all progress.
Jesus was definitely not a pessimist. He was most assuredly an optimist. That was one of the reasons that He had so much trouble in His ministry. He was up against a lot of pessimists. Pessimists are sometimes born and other times made. The people who opposed Jesus may have come by their pessimism honestly. They simply may have given up following generation after generation of struggle and grief, of lost hope, of suffering and pain. Maybe they no longer had the courage to be optimists.
Optimism does take courage. It takes belief that things can be better even if they look bad, that there can be hope in the midst of hopelessness. Optimism fuels change in the world. As Jesus was an optimist — confident in His Father’s love — so, too, are we called to be optimists. When our days look bleak, we are challenged to look for hope. When the world looks dark, we are called to seek the light. When we find what we need, we are then challenged to share it with those around us.
The pessimist would say, “There is no way to turn people into optimists”, and the pessimist would be correct. Because, a pessimist cannot turn someone into something the pessimist is not. We teach by our own example. If was want others to be optimists, we have to be the model optimist ourselves. Thank God He has given us the perfect example in His Son.
FAITH ACTION: Is there something that has caused you to struggle? Look at it from a different angle today and see if you can turn it into success.