Faith Venture

Traveling.

Yesterday was another travel day. Two-and-a-half days of software conferences. A delicious anniversary dinner Monday. More good food during the week. Four-hour flight Las Vegas to Chicago. But that means about seven hours of total travel and wait time hotel to home.

Both flights to and from were packed. People queued up orderly. Boarded. Got settled. I never heard a discourteous word. People helped anyone struggling to stow baggage. Perhaps we’ve recovered as a society from the unsettled nerves and frustrations of the Covid pandemic. Maybe that will rub off into other areas.

How good it is to travel and be emotionally drained by witnessing belligerent and obnoxious incidents.

Maybe it’s a discipline. Maybe it’s a lifestyle. Maybe it should just be who we are. Courteous, agreeable, helpful.

Too often we slip into the feeling that “It’s all about me.” 

Roadworkers arrive and begin setting up equipment in the neighborhood. They are doing it specifically to annoy me.

Someone fails to show for a lunch appointment. They did it just to spite me.

Maybe the situation has nothing to do with us. Maybe when viewed from the perspective of the other person—they are merely showing up to do the repair work required; they had a crisis large or small with work or family and couldn’t make lunch.

As a wise person said, “Don’t worry about what people are thinking about you, because they are not thinking about you.”

Often when Jesus was asked about something, he tried to get the person to divert focus from within themselves and their prejudices and their rules in order to gain the bigger perspective of seeing life from other’s points-of-view.

Perhaps that is a good discipline to cultivate.

Anyone capable of angering you becomes your master.

Epictetus

You open Facebook (or Twitter or email or whatever). You see a post from someone you know. The facts are completely wrong. The words are skewed to achieve maximum emotional impact. Your emotions are triggered. You immediately reach for the keyboard to respond.

You are a slave to that person.

You are in a conversation. The other person says things that seem like a personal attack. You respond personally. You attack. Your personality buckles into angry responding. 

You are a slave to a new master.

I have learned the pause—that moment before my fingers reach for the keyboard. That pause that lets me scroll past the nonsense.

I’ve talked of the pause before. It is one of the hardest things I’ve learned to do. Of course, the best way is to avoid needing the pause at all by simply realizing that I can control most of what I see. I can refuse to spend time in Facebook and Twitter. I can choose those people with whom to meet.

There are things in life that I cannot control But those I can control, those I had better exert effort to control.

TLDR.

Web speak for an article—Too Long; Didn’t Read.

Several years ago an acquaintance who read this blog said, “You’re a pretty good writer. You should send posts to (a certain Christian website).”

I contacted them. They said, “You’re a pretty good writer. For us, just write a headline for search engine optimization. Then write in bullet points. Make it 7 steps to, or 5 things that, and the like.”

I don’t do that.  I also try to avoid negativity (not always successfully…). That sells, too. So this blog never hit the big numbers.

The thing is—spiritual formation is both easy and hard.

The easy part is that there are only a few things you need to do.

The hard part is maintaining a right attitude and doing the few things every day. 

And, if your attitude that morning sucks, well, do the few things anyway. The doing reminds you that you are the type of person who is growing toward spiritual maturity. And that adjusts your attitude.

It’s like a virtuous cycle.