Encouraging Word July 29, 2013

“…I have heard people rant and rave and bellow

That we're done and we might as well be dead,

But I'm only a cockeyed optimist

And I can't get it into my head.”

 I woke up with this song from “South Pacific” in my head today. I don’t know if it’s because it was Monday or if I’m just tired of all the pessimistic news all the time.  I like keeping up on the world and what’s going on, but why does it seem like it’s always bad news all the time?  So when this song broke into my head first thing I thought I’d go with that attitude this morning at least for as long as I could!

Cockeyed optimist sees the world in a different way. Granted they may not always be happy or optimistic, but just as a way of life try to look at the sunnier sides of things. Like the silly mother rabbit who decided to have her babies in a very shallow depression in the middle of our fenced in yard. Smack in the middle of dog country.  We thankfully discovered the newborns before the dog did and moved them outside of the fence.  Our poor spaniel, in which is bred the instincts of hunting exactly such little creatures is going nuts.  He knows exactly where we moved that nest and he keep trying to dig and chew his way through the fence to get at them. He just wants to play… but his way of playing with our nine year Siamese cat inside the house is to grab her head and wrestle. Luckily for our cat, she goes along with him until he gets too rough and cuffs him one in the nose when he pulls too hard.  Somehow I don’t think baby bunnies would have that kind of resilience. So we moved the nest.

Next, in an obvious effort to keep our poor dog entertained, Mother Nature told a momma cat to have her new litter under our deck. So now we have new bunnies AND new kittens all over the place. Cockeyed optimists that we are we just keep telling the dog to stop chewing the boards, move whatever bunnies and kittens that escape from their safe homes into the dog’s part of yard and try to appreciate all the new life that is apparently finding our yard a nice “home”.

Isn’t that what cockeyed optimism does though? It takes something seemingly silly or unimportant and makes it seem like the right thing to do. While others may scoff at our Pollyanna point of view, it helps us to view the world with good cheer and hope. Because what is optimism? It’s hope. Hope in the future, hope that things will get better or that we can deal with it if it doesn’t. Optimism tells us that we have a reason to get up in the morning and most importantly that God is in charge.

 Why does God put two seemingly diverse creatures together in the same yard?  He knows the dog is going to go after the bunnies.  Is it an opportunity for my family to feel like we are having a positive impact on the world that in some small way we are “coming to the rescue” of small innocents?  So when we read about the horrible things people do to one another we feel we are in some small way trying to make the world a better place even just in our own yard?  It could be the lesson too that even if we try our best, bad things may happen? The dog may yet act on his instincts and hurt another creature and we just have to live with the consequences also known as the circle of life.

 Creatures and people are born and die.  Yet they all have meaning especially to God. We may not know their purpose, but He does. Doesn’t that make being an optimist, cockeyed or otherwise, a good thing?

I believe it does…

“…I could say life is just a bowl of Jello

And appear more intelligent and smart,

But I'm stuck like a dope

With a thing called hope,

And I can't get it out of my heart!

Not this heart”