On these hang all the law and the prophets
It’s a new year. I avoid “new years” resolutions because I think that if something is worth changing, it’s worth changing now and not waiting for a new year for a new commitment. Don’t get me wrong, I procrastinate with the best of them, and my June 23rd resolutions often slip and fade just like the stereotypical January 1 promises to hit the gym everyday.
I met a man named Kyle this week at a men’s prayer group. He’s the fourth Kyle I’ve met in the last few months.
There’s an old riddle that asks, “What belongs to you but others use it more than you do?” The answer is, of course, “your name.” Not only are our names mostly used by other people, but for the most part, we don’t even get to pick our own names either. Someone else gave us our names when we were born. We may be fine with the name on our driver’s license, or we may wonder what our parents could possibly have been thinking the day we were born.
Sometimes God speaks to me. Actually, He speaks a lot, but I only listen sometimes. After a lifetime of loving God, I’m still learning to listen to His voice. Sometimes it seems loud and clear. Other times it takes a while to understand as if I was listening to Kelly explain something from another room. I can catch a few key points but have to listen with intent to get the whole message. Even then, sometimes parts need to be repeated.
I grew up and learned to drive in California’s Central Valley. With a December birthday, I turned 16—and got my drivers license—right as we were headed into the winter months.
For the most part, winters were fairly mild where I lived. I think it snowed less than 1/2″ total the entire 25 years that I lived there. But temperatures would often drop into the 20s for several days at a time, and since our winters were humid, we would often experience dense fog.
I’m a nerd. I’m analytical. I weigh options. I draw conclusions and parallels. I separate concepts that don’t belong together and combine those that do. I figure things out and make them work.
Those skills all help me with my day job as a software consultant, and I’m actually pretty good at what I do. But I often find myself carrying those same traits over into other aspects of my life. Eventually, I start to realize that those same things that are “skills” for work have become “obstacles” in other areas of my life.