The Weather and Digestion

A Sunday morning, in the choir room, after a typical hello, Deborah said to me, “You look mighty chipper today. What’s up?”

“It’s Sunday. I’m excited and glad to be here. God is good!” I proclaimed. “And,” I added with a little-girl grin, “my hair looks good today.” I knew that because I’d just checked myself in the mirror in the robing room.

Which was true? Did I look happy because I was filled with a sense of purpose, desiring to worship, delighting in being in the family of God? Or did my countenance shine because I was on time, feeling strong, cappuccino in hand, pleased with the thermostat setting?

I often think about a statement C.S. Lewis made in discussing moods. It’s in the first “Faith” chapter in Mere Christianity. He’s actually talking about the need for faith in the face of our changing moods, but I’m applying his point to when our mood is up, not down.

This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is
why Faith is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your moods ‘where they get
off’, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just
a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and
the state of its digestion.

It’s the “weather and the state of its digestion” part that I’ve never forgotten, realizing that when I’m content, joyful, grateful, even worshipful, it might just be that life has simply been going my way. I’m afraid that is often the case. It’s only when the “lines (that) have fallen in pleasant places” are moved, am I given the opportunity to see if the joy holds.