Voices: How to be happy despite jarring circumstances

I’ve read if a bumblebee flies into an open glass jar, it can’t escape. It will continue to beat its head against the sides of the jar over and over until exhaustion sinks in. Eventually, the bee gives up and dies.

That bee hasn’t suddenly forgotten how to fly. It’s been doing it its whole life. It still has its wings, and they are still in good flying shape. It flew into that jar and should know how to fly out, right? So, what’s the problem? Why can’t it escape? Apparently, the bumblebee simply can’t or won’t look up. If it only could or would look up, it would find its salvation.

Are there times in your life when you feel a little like a bumblebee trapped in a jar? Perhaps you are facing some pretty jarring circumstances right now, but you find yourself endlessly buzzing around, relentlessly banging your head against those circumstantial walls until, eventually, you become exhausted. Maybe, just maybe, you’re at the point of giving up.

If you want to be happy in life despite your jarring circumstances, if you want to be released from that jar that imprisons you, maybe you need to start by simply changing your behavior. That’s what that poor bumblebee needed to do.

Looking up to the Lord

Maybe it’s time to stop banging your head against your circumstances and start looking up to the Lord who is always there for you, always with you and always looking out for you.

God has given you wings to fly up and over your circumstances, but you have to learn to look up and keep looking up. You can choose to keep banging your head against the walls of your circumstances—most of which you have little or no control over—or you can choose to lift up your head and look heavenward for your help, your hope, your salvation.

Not surprisingly, the Bible speaks a lot about the importance of looking up and looking to the Lord, especially amid jarring circumstances.

Biblical encouragement

Maybe God is speaking to you today, telling you to stop looking around and start looking up. Try beginning with some of these incredible and freeing exhortations and encouragements from the Lord:

“Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing” (Isaiah 40:26).

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1-2).

“I lift up my eyes to you, to you who sit enthroned in heaven” (Psalm 123:1).

“My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only he will release my feet from the snare” (Psalm 25:15).

“Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame” (Psalm 34:5).

“Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail” (Isaiah 51:6).

“But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me” (Micah 7:7).

“When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28).

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2).

I’m looking up, too.

For the past two years, I have found myself feeling trapped in the circumstantial jar of chronic pain.

Like the bumblebee, I started on this journey looking for an escape route, but I found myself looking for it in all the wrong places. I was looking for it in and through my circumstances. And like that bumblebee, I found myself hopelessly banging my head against the wall of circumstances I really had no control over.

But I soon discovered that important lesson of the bumblebee. Until I learned the daily discipline of continuously looking up, my “salvation” never was going to come. It’s been by looking to and feeding on that steady diet of God’s uplifting words that he has started giving me wings to fly up and over my circumstances.

I may never escape from my jar of pain. The walls of my circumstances may never change. My pain may never cease. But God’s word never changes (Isaiah 40:8). The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases (Lamentations 3:22-23). God’s promises never break (2 Corinthians 1:20).

And God’s great faithfulness (Lamentations 3:23) and his amazing, sustaining grace (2 Corinthians 12:9) are becoming the wings helping me to soar.

Do you want to be happy in life despite your jarring circumstances? Check your behavior. If you will develop a daily discipline of looking up, you will discover some unbelievably amazing, sustaining wings from the Lord that are going to help you fly.

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as bumblebees; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31, author’s paraphrase).

Jim Lemons is professor of theological studies and leadership in the College of Christian Faith and the director of the Master of Arts in Theological Studies at Dallas Baptist University. The views expressed in this opinion article are those solely of the author.