Skip to main content

expiry date

I threw out something today that was past the expiration date. The year 2007 was printed on the back of the bottle, and I figured it was time. Probably way past time. I don't know why I hold onto things that are no longer useful. It seems wasteful, I guess. But whether or not it is wasteful is not always the best deciding factor.

I said something yesterday that I regret. It was posed as a question, and on some level I guess I was asking for information, asking to understand, but the question was pretty loaded. It was skewed to carry the following message: "What's your problem? Why don't you get it together? I've figured this out, why can't you?" I didn't even realise how arrogant my attitude was until it was pointed out to me (those are real friends for you). It turns out that there are other ways to see a situation, to accomplish a task, than my way. There are people with completely different sets of skills from what I have, and I can be somewhat blind to their existence and effectiveness.

I acknowledged this in my head, but I found it hard to let go of my biased opinion for some reason, even though it was obviously not useful. It could even prove to be harmful if left unchecked, but something inside me said that there must be some grain of truth in what I was thinking. Something could be salvaged, something would be found right so that I wouldn't have to toss my whole train of thought (and my pride) aside. That would be such a waste. I was convinced that if I thought about it long enough and played a bit of Rubik's cube with the words, if I just rephrased the question, it would still be a valid query. I was wrong.

I had to pry the thing out of the tightly clenched fingers of my heart. I had to remind myself that I value humility. I value love. I value the well-being of others over my own self-fulfillment. I am not perfect and I see things wrongly sometimes. I may be a leader in a church, but that doesn't mean I have the correct perspective all the time. I have days when I just get it wrong, when my attitude is stinky, and the quicker I let it go the better for everyone involved. C'mon, Matte, just toss it in the garbage and get on with a fresh start.

Humility loves fresh starts. Pride resists them. God resists the proud. He embraces the humble. I like to be embraced. Decision made. *toss*

This is a picture of my expired crap. It is now in the garbage.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
3 comments
Read more

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...
9 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   C...
10 comments
Read more