Three keys to a positive attitude.

My friend sat on the family room floor with my bare foot on her lap. “Tell me when it hurts,” she said as she pressed and stretched the area with the fractured bone.

She happens to be an excellent physical therapist and a great friend, too.

I smiled. “It feels fine.”

“I’ll show you something. Let me have your other foot,” she said. “Your happy foot.”

Happy foot? She was right. The foot with no injury was indeed, the “happy foot.”

Isn’t that like life? When stuff gets broken—like our heart, our plans and dreams—we do forget about the “happy foot” of hope.

The one which, when remembered, demands a change of the negative attitude. And if you happen to be a member of the poor-me club, here are three thoughts for you:

1. Choosing to focus not on the bad foot of adversity but on the hope in Christ.

2. Remembering that it’s the hope found in Christ that keeps us moving forward, one step at a time.

3. Counting on the hope, the reassurance that each step takes us toward the God-prepared triumph.

No matter how lame your spirits might seem, how dark your situation or painful the circumstance may be, you do have, somewhere, a ‘happy foot’. Hop on that foot of hope.

God is already at work with the spiritual therapy for your soul. The rehabilitation is guaranteed because even when “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don’t give up and quit. We are often troubled, but not crushed; sometimes in doubt, but never in despair” (2 Corinthians 4:8).

Father, I’m grateful because when limping through life, you still prepare the path. I thank you for the foundation of your Word, firm and solid on which we walk when crushed, doubting or perplexed. Thank you for your power to bring about a new focus. In Jesus’ name, amen.

• What is causing you to limp through life?
• How can you change your focus?
• Are you living in gloom because you forgot about your happy foot of hope?

Janet