I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

I wonder how long I could convince myself that a pleasant life was the product of my positive thinking. I can make healthful, disciplined choices about my diet and activities. I can make informed decisions to hopefully procure future economic viability, but that always involves uncertainty. An upbeat attitude, or even faith in some higher power, can help us overcome illness or addiction. But that is virtually nothing in light of all time, space and energy in the universe. Whatever I suspect that I know or that I am capable of must be purely by the grace of God. I had no control over my arrival and placement in the vast universe, and I have minimal control over the six billion people I share the planet with. All the positive thinking in the world won't stop us from getting old, or getting run over or killed in some mishap. Positive thinking has never caused me to be able to grow a full beard, or caused my very straight hair to dreadlock, in spite of my preferences. Positive thinking, whatever power may exist therein, is certainly nothing worth designing a religion around or making an idol out of, though it is an attractively self-gratifying, perhaps self-justifying concept for those of us born beautiful, intelligent, and in the peak time and location of all human civilization. Life and social stability are far too precarious to take credit for, or to take for granted. A more significant observation than this is that the closer I walk with Jesus, the more I recognize that there is no positive thinking apart from Him. My mostly pleasant life has still been accompanied by a plethora of negativity on my part. "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature" (Romans 7:18).