A Place to Hang My Hat

A friend of mine once gave me a stack of old comic strips she had saved over the years. Thumbing through them, I found two sitting right next to each other that formed a striking contrast.

The first was Winnie the Pooh. Pooh asks Eeyore, "Why do you always expect the worst, Eeyore?" Eeyore answers, "You've got me all wrong, Pooh. I don't expect the worst — I depend on it."

The second was Peanuts. Snoopy's cousin Spike is writing home from the desert: "Life here in the desert is hard but wonderful. Sometimes it is very hot..." — and there's Spike, tongue out, eyes crossed, sun beating down. "And the nights can be very cold. Sometimes we have rain and sudden flash floods. Sometimes it even snows. But there are always beautiful places to walk and things to see. And when I return home, I always have a place to hang my hat." In the final frame, his hat is hanging on a cactus.

Same circumstances, more or less. Heat, cold, flooding, isolation. But two completely different postures toward them.

Eeyore has decided, before anything happens, what the world is going to give him. Spike has decided something else — that even out in the desert, with nothing but a cactus to his name, there is still beauty to notice and a kind of home to be found.

I don't think Spike is naive. The desert is genuinely hard — he says so himself. He isn't pretending otherwise. He has simply chosen where to rest his attention. The hardship gets named. And so does the gift.

The Apostle Paul, writing from a prison cell, said something remarkably similar: "I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content." (Philippians 4:11) Not because his circumstances were easy. Because he had learned where to place his gaze.

Most of us are not stuck being Eeyore. We get to choose, again and again, whether we depend on the worst or look for the cactus to hang our hat on.

Prayer: God of Grace, it is true that life is often hard - but also wonderful. Even when we get beat down by the weather, by our health, or by ugly circumstances give us eyes to see beauty and grace and love at work. Remind us of all that you have done for us that we would be filled with gratitude. Thank you for your providence and love through Jesus Christ. Amen.

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