May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!<\/span><\/span>\u201d -Jer 12:1; 20:14
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nLesson #2: Optimism isn\u2019t the same thing as condescendingly shaming people who openly admit that they are sad and anxious because of how sad and uncertain the world can be.<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201c\u2026 prophets and priests alike,<\/span> all practice deceit. <\/span><\/span>They dress the wound of my people <\/span>as though it were not serious. <\/span><\/span>\u2018Peace, peace,\u2019 they say, <\/span>when there is no peace . . . Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes.\u201d <\/span><\/span>\u2013 Jer. 6:13-14; 23:16
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nLesson #3: Optimism is having the strength to sit with others who are sad and uncertain.<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cMy eyes fail from weeping, <\/span>I am in torment within; <\/span><\/span>my heart is poured out on the ground <\/span>because my people are destroyed, <\/span><\/span>because children and infants faint i<\/span>n the streets of the city.\u201d -Lam. 1:11
<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nLesson #4: Optimism is, after having experienced that sadness and uncertainty, after having sat with others in that sadness and uncertainty, courageously stepping toward hope anyway, knowing full well that it\u2019s against the odds.<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201c<\/sup>I will be found by you,\u201d declares the Lord<\/span>, \u201cand will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,\u201d declares the Lord<\/span>, \u201cand will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.\u201d -Jer 29:14
<\/span><\/p>\nOf course, this narrative is woven more fully through the prophets and wisdom literature and is a narrative I hope to imitate more.
<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Jared Byas In the midst of Christian radio taglines that equate Christian with positive thinking and speakers that subtly question the faith of anyone who acknowledges that life really just sucks sometimes, I would like to share what I\u2019ve learned from the Jeremiah tradition about optimism. Lesson #1: Optimism isn\u2019t ignoring how sad and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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