Accentuate the Positive

Some days are easy days to be a good day. Birthdays, Christmas, Holidays. Expectation is high that good things will happen. And inevitably they do, the day turns out good, exceptionally good with presents, cake, celebrations and the like. How could it not?! Then there are the days, you wake up full of energy (before the alarm even!), the sun is shining, there are nice things already planned into your day. You have a spring in your step and you just know good things are going to happen. There seems to be positivity all around.

But then there’s those days when it just doesn’t start off well.  You sleep through the alarm, the milk is off and its pouring with rain as you take the kids to school. Then there are the days that are just a total waste of makeup. The days when things unravel faster than the cheap scarf you bought. The days when the mail doesn’t deliver a postcard from Paris or an unexpected parcel but rather an unforeseen bill or even just the reminder it’s time to visit the dentist. The kind of day when you collapse exhausted into your bed at night and find it hard to look back and think of even just one thing that was positive, nice or good.

Yet, if we pay attention to the words of the song that this blog title pertains to, we’ll realise how good it is to focus on the positive. That is to make more noticeable or prominent the good in our lives.

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
But don’t mess with mister inbetween

That’s some good advice right there. As Joyce Meyer once wrote, “a good attitude doesn’t come from having the best of everything in life; it comes from making the best of everything in life!” And yes, some days we may have to look a little harder to find the positive and the good in the day, but it will be there. And the more we focus on the good, the better our day will become.

To end with another song, it may be raining but there’s something to be said for “singing in the rain.”

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. (Philippians 4:8)