Play for others and God, not for prowess.
If you target prowess eventually you will be knocked off your pedestal. I am nearing the end of Brinkley’s biography of Walter Cronkite. Brinkley is nearing the end of Cronkite’s life. What has been striking is how the jealousy and prowess fighting between Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite became dominant in their thoughts. Cronkite regretted stepping down “too early” from broadcast television ceding his position to Dan Rather. It turned out that the competitiveness, the prowess-hunting, of Walter Cronkite was a ball tied about his ankles. When aging, life, and CBS moved on he could not. It is sad in its way.
We are given a set of years to live. The impact that makes a difference is the right now moment. I have a tendency to want to blast through the mundane of my day to get back to my solitary, computer-reading-coffee life. Many times there are aspirations and things happening in my computer-reading-coffee solitude that are designed to feed back into the people world. They are aspirational. What I am learning is that the mundane is all too often where the value is built. If I can learn the secret of involved living in the mundane recognizing that as important I think it will diminish the likelihood of a Cronkite-crankiness syndrome.
Are you willing to live a troubled life?
Suppose that you find your life highly annoying. Go further to suppose that you wish you did not have to do the thing called life because it is annoying. I do not mean you consider ending your own life, but maybe you would rather just skip living. Or, maybe you are mad at God for having made you and stuck you into living.
If this type of notion buzzes in your mind place alongside the buzz these four verses in Ephesians. That done I propose that you ask yourself a set of questions.
- Am I willing to mentally submit to God’s having made me in order that he might accomplish something of his choosing?
- Am I willing to operationalize the following statement? “Ok, God, you made me and that is how it is. Do with me what you will.”
These and similar questions are an Ephesians 3:10 approach. Coupled with them is the issue of submission.
Themes from this lesson:
- Christians have a real presence in wider dimensions than easily grasped
- Study to expand our horizon to God’s realm
- Forever has already started
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