“A bad attitude is like a flat tire, you can’t get very far until you change it.” ~ Unknown
If anyone had the right to adopt an attitude of superiority, it would have been Jesus. Yet, Jesus did just the opposite. He cast aside all vestiges of prominence and power and became a vulnerable human. One of my favorite New Testament canticles comes from Philippians. In it, we hear that our attitude must be like that of Christ. “Though He was in the form of God, He did not deem equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, He emptied Himself, taking on the form of a slave.” (Phil 2:5-7)
In our lives, we so often attempt to do the opposite. We often do everything that we can to cast off our frail human nature and become super people. We want to be the best. We have to have everything to ourselves. We feel the need to control our own destiny and the destinies of those around us. We grasp for something more than we are rather than accepting who and what we are and dealing with our present situations.
When we do that, we often end up with really bad attitudes. We are upset that things do not go our way. We are upset that we cannot seem to become better. We are upset that we cannot shape and control our lives. And when we get upset, those around us do as well because they are caught in our fallout.
Attitude is so very important to our daily lives. If we leave the house in the morning with an attitude that we are going to fail, we have pretty much decided our fate. People do that when they leave the house for school, for job interviews, or for work. For that matter, people even do that when they leave for vacations. How easy it is to sabotage a vacation simply by having the attitude that traffic will be bad, we are going to have a bad flight, and the like.
What we need is a positive attitude and there is nothing preventing us from adopting one. Why, you ask? Quite simply because Jesus Christ already did the “heavy lifting” for us. He is the one who emptied Himself entirely, becoming one of us and dying for us so that we could live. He is the one who assures us of eternal life. He is the one promised to be with us to the end of our days. With a friend like that, there is no reason to have a bad attitude.
Because of Christ, we are winners. We have everything going for us. We cannot be stopped. Check your attitude this morning and make sure to face the world with the best attitude that you can summon.
FAITH ACTION: Try to adopt a deliberate yet gentle attitude toward your duties today and make sure to be kind to all along the way.