contentment (?)

You know, in terms of happiness... (I don't know if I'm at the point where I can call it true joy), today's been the best day in like the past two weeks. So maybe I should be content.

But I realize that sometimes, it's better to struggle and have difficulties in life, because when I was supposedly happy today, all I found that I was getting gradually more and more apathetic to the issues that I had opened my eyes to while struggling the past couple of weeks. Sometimes I wish I could just cut out the nastiness within me, because I know it's there... today I found I like to ignore my shortcomings because that's what makes me struggle the most.

One lesson I'm learning is a need to love the marginalized, the isolated, the oppressed. Jesus is the hope and the light to those people, not to the successful or content, not to those who are already valued by the world... the "rich" in the world's standards.

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life."
- 2 Corinthians 2:14-16

If I am to be the aroma of Christ, I want to be the fragrance of life to those who are lost, to those who have found no value in this world, to those that no one cares about. What Jesus preached wasn't so much laws in the form of mysterious parables, it was love. I am to love God and to love my neighbors... and my neighbors aren't just the $100k income families living next door. They're the lost, the hungry, the homeless, the enslaved, the exploited. It hurts me to see people who don't care, but I do it too...