Sunday, April 11, 2010

The power of a child's "why"

It's been a while since I've posted.

I've been thinking about some stuff.
One day a small child was talking with me. He wanted to know why I was sad. He asked me "Why". After I explained that I was sad because I missed my family, he asked me "why" again. Now, when a four year old does this most people think it is incredible annoying. But this just made me want to dig deeper. There is something clear that the LORD wanted me to dig out of my heart.
O the things you discover if you just dig deep enough.

I remember something Pastor Daryl told us once. Everyone has an 'X-Factor'. What's in my X-Factor? What are the things that only God knows about me... how can I change and become a better person for the LORD? A stronger woman of God?

Children are very inquisitive and the things they say can sometimes be power enough to spark a change in ones life.. if this little guy had never asked me why, would i ever think of asking my self "why" and dig for the x-factor?

While Paul says to leave our childless acts behind us, I wonder if you first have to think like a child to do so. Jesus said " I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like a little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. therefore whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3-4)



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Saturday, June 20, 2009

Why do I do what I do?

So there was a huge wedding at my church today. Being the custodian, I am responsible for cleaning the building before and after the wedding. Now this wedding was giant. There were fancy lights and nice/contemporary music and of course.. Confetti Cannons! Confetti was EVERYWHERE. But I loved it! And I loved it the most because it was my friend's (Melanie and Steve's) wedding.

HOWEVER, had this been another person's wedding (or just a wedding for none whom I know), cleaning up that confetti would have bothered me. I would have complained and moaned about the inconvenience. I might have even posted a blog about it. But as I was cleaning the church and vacuuming up all that confetti, I found great joy. The work wasn't hard, and I had no desire to complain at all. I started thinking, "If only I felt this way about cleaning the church all the time." My willingness to clean the church for this wedding was at an all time high! and it was my heart's desire to prepare for it. Then started plotting to trick myself into thinking that I was always cleaning the church for Melanie's wedding.. because then cleaning the church would always be a joy, right?

Colossians 3:23 says, "Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you are working for the Lord rather than for people." (NLT)

I was starting to change this to "Work willingly at whatever you do as though you are working for melanie...." haha But here's the cool thing. If I can have joy about blessing melanie by cleaning the church, How much more joy can I have by doing it for the LORD?

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Urgent or Important?

I took a class called Administration and Organization. yes it was as boring as it sounds... But I did learn some useful things. One of those things was how to tell to tell the difference between something that is urgent and something that is important. Something that is important may not necessarily be urgent and visaversa. There are times however when something is important and urgent or even times when something is neither.

Here's an example of a time when someone misunderstood the difference between urgent and important: I got a trillion (obvious exaggeration for effect) phone calls at a time when I was busy. The same person kept calling me over and over and over. I was wondering if i should get up and take the call but as the person wasn't leaving any messages (and I wasn't sure about the number) i decided to ignore it. Then I started getting these text pages, "Urgent call" and "please call me". The person was finally left me a message and I was able to step out at a convenient time to listen. When I listened to the message, not only was I relieved that nothing was wrong, but I was perturbed that this person would try and contact me so urgently for what seemed like a relatively small reason.

Though the matter may have been important it wasnt urgent enough to enduce a trillion phone calls and text messages.

Actually, if people focused on the difference between urgentness and importantness they would learn better time management skills, and they would feel less stressed. well.. I learned that the hard way through procrastination. anyway.

thats my rant.