A Continual Feast

“He who is of a merry heart has a continual feast.”  Proverbs 15:15(b)

 What does that even mean?  And a feast of what?

It means that when you make a conscious decision to be cheerful, and firmly resolve that is how you will live, you will look at life differently.  You will look at difficulties with a confidence that there is a solution to every situation.  Your capacity to care about others will increase.  The likelihood of getting your feathers ruffled will decrease.  You will have a continual feast of less stress and more joy.  And I don’t know about you, but that is the kind of feast I can get excited about. 

The more time I spend in God’s word, the more I understand practical application of it.  That was not always the case.  I grew up in a church, knew the Bible stories, memorized & recited my assigned weekly scripture verses.  To me, the Bible was some nebulous group of words that had no particular value except that I had been taught that reading it was the right thing to do.  But one day, I decided that I’d had enough of playing church.  I was determined to find out if God was real or not, and whether reading a Bible would make a difference in my life. 

I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that, but I remembered a passage of scripture that gave me a starting place. It was Hebrews 6:11 which says, “For he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”  I decided that I would purposefully seek God, with the fact of His existence as my default AND I would be diligent in my seeking.  In other words, I made the decision to seek a relationship with God, believing that he exists, being attentive and persistent in my attempt to get to know Him.  That meant I had to put in some time in prayer and in reading His word.  It’s like when you decide you are going to have any kind of relationship, it will only blossom if you spend time with the object of your interest. 

I did it and it changed me.  I came to realize that the Bible is not a regular book that I could just read and instantly understand.  It is a spiritual book that can only be understood with the default mindset that God exists, and that my determination and persistence would be rewarded.  Of course, it did not make me a perfect person.  It did give me a standard by which to live, and treat people, and made me easier to get along with.  Just think, all of you who have ever been in contact with me have benefitted from that decision. 

AND I have been rewarded with a continual feast of less stress and more joy.  Things that are less than wonderful still happen in my life, just as they happen in everyone’s life.  But now, I see things through the joy in my life and I don’t let the bad things define me.  I walk through whatever comes, knowing that I can trust God to get me through it because I have sought and established a relationship with Him through Jesus Christ.  I can have good days, be joyful in my disposition and hopefully, I can be an encouragement to someone else who could use a good feast too.