Crumbs

Sometimes I get discouraged. It could be about anything, but usually I’m too focused on myself and my life. Maybe my feelings get hurt, or maybe something doesn’t happen the way I wanted it to. But I think we’re all prone to moments of discouragement.

According to Merriam Webster, discourage means to deprive of courage or confidence, or dishearten. On the other hand, we sometimes try to hinder negative behavior with discouragement. Somehow it’s just never a good feeling.

I recently felt discouraged. About what, doesn’t really matter. I was trying to figure out how to fix it, which only brought me deeper into a negative state. Then the Lord threw me a crumb. I thought about the desperate woman who asked for crumbs from the Lord when it came to her sick daughter. And about poor Lazarus who lived off the crumbs of the rich man. And I rejoiced in even a crumb from God, because through it He reminded me how to fight my self-centered discouragement.

The crumb was the ability to rejoice at God working in someone else’s life. It was focusing on others that beat down the discouragement. It was looking out the window that drew me from the mirror. It’s not by trying to be undiscouraged that we find relief. It’s not some magic formula that we can plug into. It’s not even always a crumb from God. It’s focusing on things outside our own little world that brings us back to where we should be. If we want to be Christ-like, we need to focus on others more and ourselves less.