"Shoulding All Over Themselves"

"This should work".

"You should care."

"I should think so."

"Should" is quite a loaded word, one that permits people to hold on to the ideal while facing an unpleasant "real".

"I should have done this."

The nasty word can also imprison people, permitting the guilt-ridden, forlorn, and regretful to play out over and over a failure, a misstep, or any idle, evil thought word, or deed.

Should creates a conflict which can never be resolved, justifying or damning inaction, while life continues to pass one by.

We cannot live in our minds, limited laboratories of abstract hopes and frustrations. We cannot venture out on blind fantasies, either, dismissing the grounded truth merely because it unequivocally undoes the obvious.

This is not to say that we cannot believe, hope for, and love the best. Rather, we must face what is before us, for better or for worse, and be content with what we have to work with at the outset.

Denying or ignoring our limitations with "should, should, should", we end up "shoulding" all over ourselves.

Instead, let us rest in the holy contentment of being righteous where we are, standing in Him by faith:

"You are right where you should be."

Let us joyfully embrace the present and continue in it:

"Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." (Psalm 37:3)

"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. " (Matthew 6:24, 33)

"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:31-32)

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

If you are already made the righteousness of God, then there is nothing left that you "should" do!