One of those Terrifically Short Ones

I’ve prayed for maturity, and sometimes, as soon as He leads me to the things that will lead me to it, I ask for my illusions back. Why? Because I want to be comfortable. The problem with maturity is that the things that lead to it seldom are (comfortable).

I firmly believe that much of what hurts us is just God giving us what we ask for: to become better people.

Think about it,

Chris

Life Space Accounting

There. I did it. In the words of Gandalf to king Theoden, “Breathe the free air.” It’s been 16 days of strained concentration – and it was also entirely unavoidable. Because we live in a world which is not directly subject to our wishes, we’ve got to be able to bend and flex. And there will be periods when we are asked to do something which nearly tortures the meaning of those two words.

All that being said, however, we must work hard to never forget the direct and delicate relationship between our personal and professional lives. Your personal life is the thing you lead from and it’s the thing you lead with. So we must take care. Let us not live our personal lives in such a way that our professional lives become impossible. And more importantly, vice versa: let’s not live our professional lives in a way that makes our personal lives impossible. You cannot serve one by ignoring or abusing the other because they are different phases of the same thing.

Proverbs warns against idleness – but at the same time, God’s law also demands a Sabbath. We were made to be in motion on purpose, but all our ‘motion’ requires a matching rest. That word ‘matching’ is particularly important. It’s a simple matter of math and accounting: we all need to find resting behaviors that more than match the intensity of our spending behaviors.

And as I write all this, I’m relishing the first morning of a recharging phase. Do I feel guilty? Absolutely not. In the words of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne, “Rest is a weapon.”

Have a great week.

Chris

Two Ways of Looking

Consider the difference between a map and a window. They both represent different ways of looking. The map affords a “God’s eye” perspective on a piece of planet earth. We can easily see the relationships between destinations which are too far to see just with our eyes. The problem with a map, however, is that it requires interpretation, and you have to know where you are on it if it’s to be any use at all.

A window, on the other hand, is a way of seeing which is much more concrete. You see shapes and terrain – you see what’s really there and a window never lies. The problem with the window, however, is that it does not show you how to get from here to anywhere else and it never shows you what’s beyond the next hill.

I find myself too often stuck ‘looking through the window’: dealing with immediate, urgent things which overwhelm my senses. I’m really starting to hate my Blackberry with it’s incessant pinging about problems, apparent ‘crises’ and other things flit past my ‘window’. I’m drawn to them because they are far more real than anything on the map – and far more immediate – but are they more important?

In truth, we’ll get lost looking through that window. It takes discipline – and sometimes courage – to pull back from the assault of urgent things and remember the end from the beginning, see the relationship between all things, re-establish a sense of priority and read the map!

Which do you spend more time looking at or through?

Something to consider.

Have a great weekend.

Chris

Sheer Force of Will

I have a lot of blind faith in my car. Whenever I stick my key in the ignition I expect it to respond to my wishes without hesitation. On the vast majority of days it does just that. But a car is actually a big lint-ball of technology with many different processes all working together: the fuel delivery system, the combustion chambers, the electrical system, the climate controls and then there is the electronics and power this-and-that’s. All of that to say there is a lot that can (and does) go wrong. In that event it’s not a great strategy to simply go out and believe that by ‘sheer force of will’ I can expect the same outcome from a system that is now broken. First, I need to fix the system.

It continually surprises me how much blind faith we place in our will power. It seems as though, to us, we think we simply just need to ‘make a decision’ and our life will magically comply. We say ‘I need to be more creative’ or ‘I need to be more relational’ or ‘I need to whatever…’ And then we respond with more time, more effort, more wishful thinking and often more disappointment.

Why? Because our life is a complicated system of many processes all working together. You can’t arbitrarily decide to have a different set of outcomes without changing some part of the system to match it. Where is that ‘more creativity’ going to come from? It’s as though we think our mind is like a magic wand. We need only say it and it is so. Nothing could be further from the truth.

How much time do we waste wondering “How can I change the outcome without changing anything about the system that leads to it?” As though you could draw cold water out of a hot tap just by sheer force of will! We can’t just decide to have a different set of outcomes without changing the parts of our life that are related to them.

So instead of just looking at those outcomes in your life (who you are, what your relationships are like, where your health is going, where your career is going…), why not also look at the whole range of other choices that lead to them? And if the system is broke – why not fix that first? And even if that system isn’t ‘broke’, you can at least ask how it could be changed. Every new decision you make will need to be supported by a whole new cluster of habits and changed behavior.

Just a thought,

Chris