Man! It’s super easy to get sidetracked and completely forget to write anything here. Well, maybe sidetracked is the wrong word. Busy may be better. Between work, weekend excursions to flea markets and antique shops, books, movies, and Netflix series, sometimes the days seem to evaporate. Then I look up and realize a couple of months have gone by.
Even in the midst of the busyness of the past few months, in the last couple of weeks I’ve tried to slow down a little bit, turn EVERYTHING off (a major feat in this day and time, I’ve recently realized! Ha ha!!) and just spend some time praying and reading in my bible each morning. No time table, no “Make It Through the Bible Three Times in the Next Ninety Days” reading plan, just kind of camping out, without a plan for where I’ll be going beyond the next few days, taking my time, and trying to really digest what I’ve read. Admittedly, this is the first time in recent memory that I’ve done this with any passages in the scriptures outside of Psalms. And honestly, it’s because I tend to look at the Bible too analytically and intellectually as a book that should be read as many pages at a sitting as possible. Kind of like a novel where you just want to hurry up and get to the POINT already. I know, I know, that’s kind of jacked up, which I realized when I finally just came out and said it. But once I did, it brought to mind the question, “ How much do I gloss over and miss what’s there when I do that?” Turns out the answer to this question is A LOT!
My wife has had this amazing Life Application Study Bible for, oh, probably a decade, and I’m only just now realizing what a treasure trove of thought provoking, true soul-searching questions it contains. Questions that, when answered truthfully, tend to make me adjust my thinking and my attitudes fairly quickly. It’s been a bit of an “aha” moments factory for me.
Sometimes I feel like I’m just kind of floating through the day to day humdrum of life because I’ve stopped being intentional about what I focus on and what I spend my time thinking about. Turns out, my autopilot function is all out of whack, and tends to put me into a holding pattern that says, “What are you doing HERE?”, “You’re 40. What have you been doing? Look at all the things THAT GUY has accomplished. You haven’t done anything even remotely close to THAT!” Hanging out in this holding pattern tends to make me start comparing myself to other people, which has absolutely nothing to do with my own personal journey. If I measure success by looking at other people, people who don’t have NEARLY the same path, plan, or purpose I do, and who I have absolutely NO WAY of knowing what they’ve gone through on the way to where I PERCEIVE them to be, it’s easy to get discouraged and stop following the path that was made for ME.
All that to say that I’ve become a bit more intentional with just slowing down and hanging out with God in the mornings. And it seems to me that this makes the humdrum stuff seem quite a bit more bearable. Apparently, I don’t have to accomplish gigantic things each day. I just have to take enough time to slow down and be reminded of who I am and Whose I am. And it seems the less I plan where I’m going next, the more the passages I read on any given day relate to what I need to hear or focus on. And every single time I read the perfect words that apply to what I’m thinking about or struggling with, it makes me stop and say, “Thank you, Father.” Because the more I learn, the more I figure out that all God wants from me is time and trust.
Basically, it’s gonna be another “Autopilot off” day. And that’s just fine with me!
