Listening Back, Together

As most of you know, for the last 4+ months I have been serving as the General Manager of Genesis on an interim basis. As I've shared previously during this time I have struggled to contribute regularly to this blog. Why do we struggle so with things we are committed to? Maybe its because we are not as committed as we say we are. Or maybe something or someone else distracts us from our commitments (tries to change our priorities). That something could be something good (like serving others for me) or something not so good (like laziness and selfishness for me). That someone could be a friend, an acquaintance, or a foe (even The enemy).

I think it is a combination of all those things/people that has contributed to my struggle with the commitment I have to communicating through this blog. But I think there may be another even more important reason why I've struggled and why we often struggle with things we are committed to. And that is wrong thinking about the thing we are committed to. Sometimes we blame other things, especially busyness when the real problem is not thinking right about what we've committed to. In the case of sharing my faith walk with others through Slender Wires I've realized that I've been thinking wrong about what I should be writing in these posts.

Over the last months as I've been working at Genesis I've been surprised how much of my time is doing paperwork, sitting in front of the computer, dealing with emails, writing policies, responding to audits, developing budgets and fundraising strategies. All that stuff, so I thought makes for pretty boring reading. I said I wasn't blogging because I was too busy but really I wasn't blogging becuase I felt what I was doing and living day to day would bore people and not inspire or encourage them. I felt like I had to have an emotional story or something clever or profound to share in my posts. I did manage one what I thought was a pretty clever post related to something as boring as audits and doing accounts "I reckon" :).

Then this week I started reading Walking with God by John Eldredge. In it he says he's going to share of series of stories of what it looks like to walk with God over the course of a year. It's a goal that is similar to what I want to do with Slender Wires. And as he says, "How much more valuable might this be if we could share with one another the stories of our true encounters with God - not the mountain top ones, but the everyday encounters...". He also quotes Frederick Beuchner about writing an autobiography. Buechner says "... it seems to me that no matter who you are, and no matter how eloquent or otherwise, if you tell your own story with sufficient candor and concreteness, it will be an interesting story and in some sense a universal story..." . The mundane not the mountaintop is valuable when shared. My excuse of not having anything interesting to share was just that, an excuse and based on wrong thinking.

But why is it that the mundane is important to share. How does my telling the mundane everyday happenings of my life contribute to anyone else's faith journey. I think Buechner anwers that as well. "If God speaks to us at all other than through ... the Bible and the church, then I think he speaks to us largely through what happens to us... " . And if I am going to hear God speaking to me in this way I have to "listen back over what has happened to me" in the mundane times as well as the exciting times (partly because there are a lot more of them). And as I listen back to hear God in the everyday events of my life, you have the opportunity to listen back over what has happened to you. We find Buechner is right, our stories are universal. And maybe you and I will hear God together. Cool! Let's stay commited to sharing our stories.