….Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 1 Pet 1:13

What do I set my hope, my happiness on?  Twice a week I go to the gym.  Depending on how I’ve eaten during the week, I am either looking forward to or dreading getting on the scales to verify my weight.  Donning the same workout outfit each time guarantees that the number will be accurate.  I’m extremely happy when the scale registers 131 or less.  Recently it has hovered at 133.  Attributing that 2 pound discrepancy to cold weather increasing my appetite or the start of the holiday season, I have decided that at 133, I am relatively happy.  Higher than that, I would be depressed.

Reading Peter’s admonishment to Christians to base their hope (and therefore, their joy) on something so dependable as God’s promise made me reflect how tenuous is the source of my happiness.  Doesn’t the status of my body fall into the category of ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ in Matthew 6?  Yet I allow my well-being to hinge on the status of something very temporary!  Jesus goes on to admonish his audience NOT to care so much about food and clothes, things the body needs, for even the Pagans run after those things.

So when I allow my whole mental attitude for the day to be based on how thin I feel, I am doing just what the world does.  How does that glorify God or even point to God?  It’s all about me feeling good about myself based on what I have done.

Lord, help me to wake up tomorrow morning and choose a different way to evaluate my mental status.  In that fog of checking to see if there are any real anxieties facing me, remind me of the grace you have given me.  Only then can I hope to rejoice in something far ‘weightier’ and more permanent (and absolutely guaranteed) than the pounds I carry.