I gotta admit I love piñatas, they can take a party to the next level. You got the brightly colored paper mâché donkey filled with candy, toys & trinkets. Somebody beats it with a stick, releasing the goodness & there’s a mad scramble. It’s a great thing UNLESS what comes out isn’t what you were hoping for. It’s always a little disappointing when someone puts cheap stuff in there, or worse…healthy stuff! Carrots? This sounds mean, but I always wanted to put 7 pounds of bean dip in a piñata. Salsa would be fun too, just to see the reaction. It could be scary.
Do you ever feel like a piñata? Life is just beating the crud of you. We all go through that…life is hard. We get pounded. The question is what comes out of you when life is hard. Sometimes it’s not pretty. The fact is what comes out of you is what you have put in you, pretty simple physics. The unsettling fact is that it’s in the tough times that we find out who we really are. It’s made clear by what comes out of when we get pounded. The secret is that the stuff IN you should be tougher than the stuff pounding you. That happens by emptying our self of self & continually getting filled with the Holy Spirit. It also helps when we are filling ourselves with truth & beauty. Life is tough, we get pounded like a cheap piñata (sorry, but it’s an inevitable part of life on a broken planet). But, we get to decide what comes out of our lives. Turn the pounding into a party.
“Finally, brothers and sisters, fill your minds with beauty and truth. Meditate on whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, whatever is virtuous and praiseworthy.” – Philippians 4:8
carbonated joy 