"And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." – Colossians 3:14
My last post was published October 25. Yikes, that was awhile ago! Lately, I’ve started several posts and then hit a wall. My thoughts got stuck. I’m hoping to revisit those posts soon and complete them. Until then, I wanted to write down some thoughts on uniqueness.
You are unique, and you were created for a unique and specific purpose.
You show up to a social gathering you don’t know very many people at. You were invited by a close friend. You find your friend and he introduces you to someone you have never met. After exchanging names, the stranger asks, “So, what do you do?”
The Bible starts out with a poem. In this poem, God creates creation. He spends 6 days creating light, the stars, the earth, oceans, land, animals, and humankind. On the seventh day, God rested and saw that His work was good.
If God needs rest, then so do we. Continue reading “The Importance of Rest”
Why do we work? What is it that makes me want to work hard? Continue reading “Why?”
Vision is a great thing to have. It is a great thing to have an overarching goal; something to strive for. However, there needs to be little mini goals that work as sign posts along the way. Let me give an example:
This weekend, I am getting ready to stuff envelopes full of invitations for my wedding. The guest list is pretty beefy, and there will be around 200 invitations to send or pass out to people. That is a lot of mail.
I could stack those invitations up and just try and rip the bandaid off. However, I know for a fact that this is discouraging and tiresome. The further down I get in the mail pile, it seems to carry the illusion that it is actually growing. My brain begins to ask, “When will this end?!”
However, if I divide the mailing up into groups of 10 then I am down to something more manageable. 10 invitations seem easier to stuff. To send 100 invitations out, I just need to have 10 groupings. All of the sudden, things do not seem quite as overwhelming.
Add the help of friends on to this, and suddenly invitation stuffing doesn’t seem nearly as intimidating.
This goes with any goal in life. Set a big goal, as you have probably heard before, reach for the stars! Then set smaller goals, develop a plan, and with each goal you achieve you can feel a sense of accomplishment instead of feeling defeated that you aren’t even half way to where you wish you were.
Too many weeks have ended with me thinking, “Boy am I glad that is over!” With the phrase: “Thank God, its Friday!” that seems to be the popular interpretation. Just like the song says, many of us are working for the weekend.
How can we redefine Fridays? Its good to have a day to look forward to, but when we are wishing time away to get to the end of the week, we aren’t living in the here and now. When we dont live in the here and now we miss opportunities that God places right in our laps. At the end of the week, can I look in the rearview mirror of Monday-Thursday and feel good about it, or do I look in the rear view mirror and see traffic jams and wrecks from running red lights?
We can say, “Thank God, its Friday” and not have it be about celebrating the end of something bad. Everyone is going to have a bad or off week. There is no denying that. However, there have been times for me where the norm became just surviving until Friday. This is not a good thing! After all, Friday is only one day of our week.
So, how can we thank God its Friday in a more positive light? Friday can be a good time of reflection of how the week went, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. Friday should still be a celebration, but it can be a celebration of the whole week and not just the end of the week.
Some good questions to ask on a Friday:
How was I faithful this week to God, to coworkers, to friends, and to work?
Where was I not as faithful?
How did I care for those God has blessed me with relationships with?
In asking these questions, Friday isnt just a finish line. Friday becomes a celebration of the victories you’ve had this week, and it can also be a day when you ask, “How can I do better?”
I’ve always loved Fridays but not always for a good reason. I want to redefine TGIF. What about you?
In case you haven’t noticed, the title of the site went from “Christian and Nerd” to “Becoming.” It rebranded. Let me explain:
When I started this blog, I wanted to write about 3 things: God, technology, and video games. Now, I still enjoy reading about new technology, and from time to time I sit down with my PS3 to blow off some steam. However, these things are inconsequential hobbies that I enjoy when my mind switches to the “off” position.
We all need the “off” position in small doses. However, when our minds are switched “off” for long durations of time, then we find ourselves going into complacency. We stall out. We put in our time at work, and then come home and become entertainment zombies.
I’ve been an entertainment zombie before. I don’t think I’ve been one for a long time. However, I was finding that I was writing tech posts that never actually got posted. I just didn’t feel the need was there, and I was posting on news that other more specialized sites had already covered.
Not to mention there was just no focal point. The writing was a mish mash of whatever I felt like writing about. That’s what most blogs are, after all.
However, while reading and taking a class titled, “48 Days to the Word You Love,” by Dan Miller, I became inspired to do a couple of things:
1. Write more – This is one of the gifts I believe God has blessed me with (though, you may disagree).
2. Write with purpose – Its one thing to just write, its another thing to write with purpose.
So this blog is officially rebranding from a personal, “I’m going to write whatever the heck I want,” blog to a blog that is focused on stories, thoughts, and ideas about people becoming who they were created to be.
Just like I believe this blog’s focus needed to narrow, I think we need to narrow the focus in our lives as well. Sometimes we can get so caught up in what other people tell us we should be that we forget who we really are. In this case, rebranding is a refinement of purpose. Just as this website needed rebranding, I think our lives need it too.
We were all created for something. Let’s “rebrand” by becoming who we were created to be.
musingsonlife 