“Lessons Learned”
“Wouldn’t it look weird if you were kneeling in a room, moving your hand around in little circles and poking at the air like a mini-jackhammer?” I asked Doug. He just laughed. He knew what I was inferring. We had been painting wrought iron gates with 1” brushes for five hours, focusing on the tedious task before us and saying very little to one another. What if we were making all the same movements but without paint, brushes or iron gates? (Weird thought.)
Sometimes life feels that way. Like you’re going through the motions but there is nothing to show for it. Meaningless. If there were no progress, no measurable sign of accomplishment, no purpose for the process, then the task would feel pointless. Do you ever feel that way? It makes me want to change what I’m doing, doubt what I’ve done and wonder what I’m supposed to do. It feels like time is standing still and running out all at the same time. It feels like a waste of time! “Carson, would you ever sprint full speed, jump as high as you can and land on the ground chest-first like a Superman?” He smiled. (I think he might.) “Yet we had just watched a grown man on that football field do it.” What makes people do that? The ball? The game? The crowd? I believe it has something to do with purpose. It’s not what we do, but why we do it that makes our doing meaningful.It’s possible to loose the vision for why we do what we do. Faith sees the purpose in the process when there is no visible progress, no measurable sign of accomplishment: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. [What’s the purpose?] For those He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son…” (Rom. 8:28-29). JESUS is the glory of God manifested in us! This is why I “labor until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).
“Gutsy Quotable”“I spend my days in the midst of others’ utter hopelessness, an endless stream of failures and fighting and frustration, which seeks out and finds every hiding, lingering, rotting, stinking ounce of my life’s bitter hopelessness and brings it right to the surface…And when I bring my whole nasty self to the party day after day, picking people up off the streets, beaten and bloodied, chaining them to my radiator, and loving them back to life with wild, untamable enthusiasm, I get to go to a lot of weddings when the time is just right, and I feel very alive.” –Unknown
