Growth

The Right Thing

Once you make up your mind never to stand waiting and
hesitating when your conscience tells you what you ought to
do, and you have got the key to every blessing that a sinner
can reasonably hope for.
… John Keble (1792-1866)

So often we struggle with where life takes us. We wonder if the decisions we are making are going to turn out for good or bad. When the road forks in many directions, we hope that somewhere we can find a spoon, or a knife, or something that will make choosing a little easier. Even choosing nothing, is choosing something. And so we take a step forward, hopeful that if its not the optimal option we’ll have the opportunity to make up for it somewhere along the line.

When we’re faced with this situation. it’s an amoral decision we must make. There isn’t a right or wrong – only a multitude of choices. This type of question is of the essay variety, not the true/false kind. When we are faced with a decision that demands a moral response, knowing the right thing to do may be easier, but actually doing it can still contain a great amount of difficulty. Moral certitude can be a weak propellant. Maybe because doing the right thing in a difficult situation is rarely the easy thing. It extracts a price and we wait to count the cost before taking the step.

But waiting isn’t the antidote to what ails us. This is one of the few situations where quicker is better. The right course of action doesn’t change and acting on our convictions only grows more difficult with each passing second. The good news – the more we act on our convictions, the more we’ll be witnesses to God’s faithfulness, and maybe that we’ll help us do the right thing a little quicker next time.

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Relationships

It’s All About Me

When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.”
–Bernard Bailey

I’m often struck by how much I think about me. I’m an introspective person, so maybe I have a heighten sense of this compared to most people, but really, have you stopped and thought about how much “you” were the topic of your internal conversation? “I” am how I perceive the world, how I make sense of what goes on around me, and how I evaluate my relationships. We talk in terms of what happens to us – as if the person on the freeway who cut in front purposefully tried to ruin “my” day. We judge people on how they treat “me” regardless of who they actually might be. We perceive, quite readily, that our experiences are what makes up reality and therefore our perception of reality is what’s true.

It’s amazing then that as Christians what happens to “us” is supposed to be the least of our concerns. First, our life is no longer our own – we’ve given it as a gift of love in response to the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf. Secondly, our back is covered; we have the Creator of the universe paving the path that we’re to tread. There’s no reason to be focused on what’s going happen to along the way; ultimately our destination is paradise. Being freed from the focus on us allows us to focus on others and in helping to make sure that their arrival is also secured.

Perceiving the universe with me at the center might be ridiculously common. But let’s hope we get a right perception of things before science proves how ridiculous it actually is.

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