Keep Yourself Open To Change

Keep Yourself Open To Change

It’s easy to get sidetracked when we compare our journey with the calling of other people.

It’s one of the many ways the enemy of our soul gets us offtrack.

Getting stuck in a groove takes the zest from our lives.

Routine has its purpose, but living on the edge, especially when you can’t see the boundaries, makes us come alive.

Settling makes me weary.

When I look back at history, I see God’s people moved in community but rarely settled.

Maybe wandering doesn’t mean we’re lost; it means we’re engaged with the world around us.

To settle might be the step right before we slip into apathy.

Study after study shows to use the mind, challenging it, even running rocky paths and steep slopes, wards off dementia and keeps the mind sharp.

In my younger years, I thought my sixties would be all about comfort and settling.

Boy, was I wrong.

Retirement is defined as “the action or fact of leaving one's job and ceasing to work.

I left my job in 2008.

I didn’t get the message that I was to cease work.

The next year, we created a business.

As I read stories in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, I don’t see a lot of the characters “ceasing to work.”

We work less, but I can’t imagine actually stopping.

I compare life to a sponge.

If you leave it on the counter, it dries out and gets hard.

But put that sponge in water, and it will absorb everything around it.

I don’t want to be someone who can’t find satisfaction and works to work.

But I don’t see a rockingchair in my future either.

How do you open yourself up to new challenges?

A few months ago, I felt like I needed to prune some things from my life.

It’s easier to let things go.

But I knew I was stuck, and without taking action, I would continue to run in circles.

I had a friend whose tomato plant looked amazing, but there was too much foliage and not enough fruit.

She watched as I severely pruned back the plant to make it more fruitful.

The look on her face was one of horror as I cut the plant back to a quarter of its size.

A few weeks later, red tomatoes appeared all over the plant.

My life is like that plant.

If I don’t prune, what is simply overgrowth, the result is less fruit.

It looks healthy enough, but all the energy is going to stems and not into creating actual fruit.

God asks us to leave things.

Sometimes it’s our job, sometimes our homes, sometimes it’s habits that get in the way of growth.

Keep your eyes focused on your calling, not the job of the guy next to you.

To compare your life with someone else’s is a warning sign that destruction is near.

One more warning, when you start to prune, well-meaning people will tell you to stop.

Don’t stop.

Keep yourself open to change.

Listen for the right time to move.

Look to the horizon for the next thing.