Hello Blog readers,
I'm still reflecting on the results of my recent run for Congress and thinking about what happened, and what can I or even we learn from all of this. I'm not trying to be negative, but I learned how stuck we seem to be on the negativity and narrow mindedness of some of our positions.
I understand the hurt. Life does not turn out the way we think it should sometimes. We look to blame others. Just look at Cain and Able in the early stages of life. Cain wanted to blame somebody and took it out on his brother. We seem to fall into that trap over and over again.
If our life doesn't turn out the way we hoped, who can we blame? We probably ought to start with ourselves. We don't have ultimate control on all things, and we have to remember that. I pray all the time the way Jesus taught, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." The Lord's Prayer is still a vital part of this. Not to blame God, but a lot of the time, we don't bother to check in with God about what is best for us, so we run off on our own path and get into trouble of our own making. But we don't want to admit that, so we blame others.
What can we do, when life doesn't fit our plan. I created an Unemployed Support Group, in two different churches as a response to the needs of my congregation, when a local business closed and made several of my church members unemployed. We would gather on Monday mornings, to give them purpose for starting the week, and we would encourage each other. I did a lot of grief counseling at that point and grief needs to be dealt with because in many ways that is what leads us to more trouble. We don't grieve well enough the last dead end we hit, to be able to move forward.
In the Unemployed support group, we looked at figuring out who we really were, what our interests and experiences were. We looked back at what we dreamed we would be as kids thinking about what to do when we grew up. We redid our resumes with help of experts to find a better way to say what we could do. In some cases we looked at going in a different direction altogether. That would take some classes or reading or interning in a different field to get started. I urged the class members to talk to people who do the things they thought they might like to do to gain knowledge and information to pursue it if necessary.
So maybe we need to look into a different direction with the anger in this country. Can we fix the mess we are in by looking at our disappointment and charting a new course? Are we out of work because we didn't have the skills necessary to keep up with the changes? Don't blame someone else for taking your job if you weren't ready for it anyway. There is a feeling that the immigrants are taking all the jobs. But they are willing to work at almost anything to get started on their dream. We need the same inner fire to go after it. I bet our grandparents, or whoever in our family got here first put that kind of effort into succeeding.
As a country, we need to look beyond ourselves because we are a big country. We need to look at the whole story more often than we do. We need to reconnect to our family, our tribe, our neighborhood and build on that.
Family is very important and it can be a biological family or a close network of friends who share a passion to do better. Don't make friends with people who tear you down or limit your potential. Find friends who will believe in you. This will require developing a skill called love. The Biblical kind of love. See I Corinthians 13 as an example.
Tribe is a bigger family, more diversified, but similar connections. We have to learn to look beyond the immediate family to relate to more people. A tribe could be your church, your groups like Lions Club or other similar associations. Meeting more people with a common focus or purpose. It could also be the community that our children go to school in. Develop some pride in the place where we find ourselves in the most of time.
Enough rambling for the moment, I have several ideas about how we need to look beyond ourselves and develop positive new places. Come on the journey to explore them.
Blessings
Pastor Jeff
No comments:
Post a Comment