Two men looked out from prison bars

One saw the mud, the other saw the stars                        Frederick Langbridge

Have you heard about the most serious "Pandemic" known to modern medicine? It's the Yabut Flu. You know about the Yabut Flu. You may even suffer from it yourself. It's symptoms show up on multiple occasions each day. They usually look something like this: 

It's a beautiful day, so you turn to your neighbor and say something clever like, "It's a beautiful day", to which they respond, "Yeah, but if we don't get a rain soon, we will have another drought".

Or, your wife proudly proclaims something along the lines of, "We had enough money to pay all of the bills this month", to which you reply, "Yeah, but I wonder what's going to happen next month" or, "It doesn't matter anyway - we'll probably have to claim bankruptcy just to get by."

The "Yabut Flu" is that it is highly contagious, and highly destructive. Most people, including ourselves, have had this disease on many occasions. The problem with this nasty virus is that it steals our optimism, our hopes and dreams, and our joy.

The good news is that this dread disease has a cure: Jesus. The bad news is that most people simply haven't found the cure yet... have you?

If you are living a sub par life because you focus on the bad things in life, rather than the good, maybe it's time for a change. It's true that you cannot easily change the poor attitudes of those who have grown comfortable with pessimism, but you can have a positive influence on them. And, you can certainly do something about your own attitude. It begins by taking your focus off of the mud, so that you can look up and enjoy the awesome beauty of God's wonderful stars.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalms 118:24, NIV