A Happy Little Buoy

Recently I heard a preacher say that we would have a "buoyant attitude."  Of course my ears picked up at the word buoyant. 

My husband and I love to kayak and buoyancy is an important term to us.  Our kayaks are very buoyant.  They float across the water, carrying us and whatever we choose to bring with us from our put-in, to our destination and back.  Even when the waves kick up, our little boats rock on top of the waves and current keeping us safely out of the water.

Our life-jackets are also buoyant, which is exactly why we wear them.  We have tested them and I was very surprised when I slid off my kayak into the cool water of the river.  My body immediately plunged down under the surface and the buoyancy of my life-jacket helped to bob me right back up to the top.  It's no wonder they are called "personal flotation devices."

If something is buoyant, it is like a buoy. . .it bounces and bobbles on the surface regardless of the waves and current underneath.  Have you ever noticed how happy buoyant things look?  Kids on an inner tube?  A buoy nodding its head out in the bay? Our sweet little kayaks bouncing along the river?

If we have a buoyant attitude, we will be not just riding above, but bouncing above the problems and issues of our day.   So why is it that we don't always experience this buoyant attitude?  Perhaps we have the same problem David once did:

"I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed." Psalms 77:3

Complaining is just the opposite of buoyant.  Complaining is overwhelming.  It is dragging down and disturbing.  It is a weight that ties us down, like the ballast on a boat. There doesn't seem to be much happy about a person who is busy complaining.  And they certainly don't seem to be glorifying and praising the Lord!

So let us face each wave and current with the challenge to be buoyant and not to be overwhelmed.  To be lifted up by the knowledge that this moment did not take our Lord by surprise and that He is working even in this to work out His eternal purpose in Christ Jesus in and through us.  

Instead of complaining, let us offer up, as the Apostle Paul says, "the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name," (Hebrews 13:15.) 

 And let us remember it is the Lord's will that we face each new wave on the river with thanksgiving to Him, knowing that He is working in our lives to "work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose," (Romans 8:28) that we might be "conformed to the image of His Son."

"In every thing give thanks: 

for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."

1 Thessalonians 5:18