Making the Best of a Bad Situation – Part 2 — Morning Devotions

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Making the Best of a Bad Situation – Part 1 — Morning Devotions

Am I really looking at this properly or am I biased? Are my biases influencing the way I’m thinking? Accepting things? That’s a big topic. It’s taking an honest look at things as they are right now. You kind of let go of judging it or interpreting it. You just don’t need to add this other layer of saying I’m a failure or I’m a victim.

No, it’s looking at it. You know, you can live waiting for an apology from someone you know, someone that you think has hurt you. But that apology may never happen. You can keep procrastinating or you admit “Look, I can’t do this. I’m scared.”

You can say I wish I had more choices, but you can say, “Well, that’s just the way it is.” So making the best of a bad situation is really all about accepting a reality. Taking a picture of your situation. People sometimes refer to that as a camera check. Don’t put things in the picture that you wish were there. But honestly, look at what is there. It is what it is. A lot of people say that face the facts. It could be brutal. It could be upsetting.

But that’s the first thing. Don’t get stuck in the past. And I like this concept. While it’s important to grieve, perhaps, and to give a name to something that’s happened in the past, we can’t live in the past. We must never let the grieving process of something that we’ve lost or some hurt to paralyse us. Recall what you had at one time with gratitude, and you can be grateful. We’re all grateful for the memories we have and look to the future.

It was John Claypool who used to say we do not know enough to give up and live in despair. What about an inventory taking a check of who and what we still have. You might have lost some things. Some serious things, of course, but there is never a time when you’ve lost everything.

Checking for everything we do have

The ancient Jews we read in the Old Testament despaired because they’d lost everything that they valued and they were deported. I spoke about this yesterday. They’d lost their temple. Jeremiah had tried to lift them up out of their despair. They’d lost their temple, their city, their homes. And it seems that all they could do was focus on what they had lost. And they forgot what they still had. And Jeremiah reminded them. Look, all is not lost.

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They still had a lot of things that mattered. They had their family. They had their faith. Friends. They had love and hope and losing what they thought mattered could help them discover what really mattered, if they would be prepared to do that. And it’s the same thing for us in this day and age, taking responsibility for our own lives. No knight in shining armour is going to ride up on a white horse and rescue you.

And it didn’t happen for those disillusioned captives in Babylon that we read about in the Old Testament, because the decisions that we make today, whether they’re big decisions or small, will determine where you will be tomorrow.

So take responsibility, don’t blame others. And don’t sell yourself short. You already have the strength that you need to make the most of a bad situation. I know it’s a normal thing to say that, but don’t sell yourself short. What have you been through? And if you have been through really tough times, did you get through it? Maybe you’ve learned a lot about yourself as you sit and think about it, and I think you need to say, “Well, how can I use these new insights to make the situation better?”

There are two more things I want to say this morning about making the best of a bad situation.

Find a support group

Now, there’s a lot of these groups around today. There’s no reason to travel this road of life alone. Be a good neighbour. You don’t know exactly what your neighbours are going through. Reach out to those people and find a group that will understand you and rely upon God because God, our Eternal Father wants to be a travelling companion with you, Because God, we know is willing to accompany you on every step of that journey.

Even in your Babylon as it was for the ancient Israelites. Their time of despair. God is there to provide strength and insight and wisdom, guidance and courage.

Let’s Pray

Dear Lord, thank you that in these times of despair and in a bad situation, you’re there, right beside us. Amen.