Reflections 8/20/2020: These “Mayhem” commercials always make me super uncomfortable! I HATE how he always gets away with damaging people’s lives, then smirks it off as just another success. I want to slap him silly! BUT, truth be told, invariably we humans participate with him in his destructive schemes. Easily distracted. Naively persuaded. Doublemindedly convincible. Or selfishly determined to “have it our way.” 2020 has released “Mayhem” to do damage at whole new levels! Worldwide chaos and destruction.😢And much of that has NOTHING to do with our participation in his schemes. Helpless victims? Could be. But maybe not. We still have some choices in the matter. Can’t control the externals to a large degree, but we are still masters of our inner attitudes in how we choose to respond to those externals. Viktor Frankl wrangled with “Mayhem” in a Nazi prison camp… (way worse than our shadow boxing with “Mayhem” in our pandemic quarantine!), and forged a way to find meaning even in the horrors of that brutal reality. HOPE. Hope that there still was a future to be had. That meaning could be birthed from that tiny seed of hope. How much more powerful is it when that HOPE is founded in You God? Able to shut down the destruction of “Mayhem” at will, and even more, to “serenitize” our hearts in the midst of his mocking schemes! Life’s crashes will come… it’s part of what makes life life. BUT we can wipe that smirk off of “Mayhem’s” face with our unexpected responses!