Daily Devotional For November 1, 2025
“Rejoice over her heaven, and also the saints, apostles and prophets, because God has judged her in the same way she has judged you.” Rev 18:20.
An interesting feature of this text is that the saints are commanded to rejoice, they are commanded to be happy. Most of us think that we can only be happy when things are going well. But evidently, happiness is a choice, a choice that God’s people can make even in the hardest of times.
Recently my mother had to spend some time in a nursing home. 91 years old at the time, her foot got caught in a blanket while trying to get to the phone and she fell down hard, breaking the upper part of her left leg, right next to the hip. After the break was set, she spent several weeks in the hospital. The time came when she still needed 24-hour care but Medicare would no longer pay the high costs of hospital rehabilitation. So she moved into a room at a nursing home with three other women at a reduced level of care.
While visiting her from day to day, I noticed that the residents of the nursing home seemed to have very different reactions to their situation. Some of them seemed angry all the time, demanding things of the attendants and complaining about everything from the food, to the quality of the mattress, to the location of the television, to the nurses’ reaction time. They seemed to be suffering a great deal from moment to moment.
Others were just the opposite. They were cheery, greeting everyone who walked by, thanking the nurses for their efforts even when things didn’t go well, commenting on the beautiful sunshine out the window, and complimenting the doctor for taking time out of his busy schedule to visit with them.
One of the residents was asked about her unfailing cheerfulness. I thought you might be interested in her response.
“Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged. . . what counts is how I arrange my mind. Every morning I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.
“Each day is a gift, and I try make things as pleasant as I can for everyone around me. It seems that if I think more of others than I do of myself, I can make a difference in my world, even though much of me doesn’t work anymore. This sense of purpose that keeps me going. It’s just a lot more fun to be happy and cheerful than it is to be angry and resentful.”
Lord, I choose to be happy today. Help me to change my world and the attitudes of the people around me.