Emotional Fruit Salad

This past year the children’s ministry volunteers at our church played a game called Emotional Fruit Salad. (You can learn how to play this game by clicking here for your next party!) Some who are, let’s say, a little more conservative, wanted to shoot me I’m sure, but we all had a good laugh by the end of it. The game seeks to help with the expression of extreme emotions. I wanted to emphasize how important it is that we learn to express all kinds of emotions not only in life, but also very intentionally as we serve and teach kids.

Most of us go through life expressing very few emotions. Yet God created us with a great variety of emotions that we can tap into. The emotions in our lives reflect our heart. A mundane emotional face reflects (possibly) an apathetic heart. A bright and cheerful face, however, can reveal a joyful heart.

We are not complete victims of our emotions. Rather, we do have much ability to affect them. Emotions are commanded in Scripture. Our theme verse for the year was this: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good (1 Peter 2:2-3).” We see emotions from birth. Like a baby longs for his mom, we can desperately desire the goodness of God. Such an emotionally packed verse!

So choose to smile big today. Not in a fake or forced sort of way, but because you choose to believe in the abounding goodness of God. This will not only encourage your own heart, but also the hearts of those you meet with every day. Set a goal and see how much happiness you can spread over the next week.

I love Craig Jutila’s take on this in his blog, “Every Day is a Terrible Day.”

Picture from: http://georgeumbrasileiro.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/what-is-the-difference-between-knowledge-and-wisdom/