The more I do what I do, the more I begin to realize the difference between someone I may like and someone I want to be around.
I may like you if you can talk about sports and music and how your day is going. But I want to be around you if you can tell me the way something should be in real life. I may listen to you if you come to me and complain or you’re having a rough day and need to get it out, but I’ll want to stay there and keep listening if you then go into how things can and will be better eventually.
When someone paints a picture of how things could be and should be in the world, people follow. I follow.
So today if you talk to your friends and share how things are going and maybe you get the urge to complain a bit about all the bad things going on, follow it up with how things will eventually turn around, and maybe even share with them a vivid picture of what that looks like.
If we were only as descriptive about the good things that are happening as we are about the bad things…
Seeing the good in everyone is something I’m trying to improve in my life. I think I was raised this way, but as time went on, and I saw and experienced the realism, politics, and harshness of the church and life, “seeing the good” in people became something of a dream rather than a reality.
But the last few weeks have gone a long way to improving my state of being in this area. First, I started to really believe and live out the idea that “love spreads”, then this weekend I drove to Northway Church in Albany, while spending time with some really great friends that attend Terra Nova in Troy, NY. Talking about the diversity of these two church really made me see the value in their differences.
Today is sermon creativity day for muah. On Mondays I try to create sermons for the next several months – beginning some and adding to some I’ve already begun. I also listen for a few hours to Pastors I enjoy. But today I decided to listen to a pastor I enjoy, and also to a pastor with a different style than I normally “dig”.
Wow! I feel so juiced by what God is showing me. Though I don’t always agree with what everyone that I listen to says or writes, I can appreciate the spirit that they write in, and follow the truth God has for me as I read and listen. And just to let you know, when I say I listened to pastors of differing viewpoints, I don’t mean that those differences have to do with Jesus. They both proclaim Him and the His beautiful gospel!
But I’m still not telling you the names of the pastors.
Sometime in 2005 I took a test to find out what my strengths were. I found that my top 5 were as follows: 1. Ideator, 2. Positivity, 3. Connectedness, 4. Competition, 5. Developer
I noticed as several of my friends took the same test that several of us had one of those in common. Out of the 7 people I know that took the test, 5 of them had connectedness as a strength.
Some qualitites of someone with this strength – “That I gain confidence from knowing that we are not isolated from one another or from the earth and the life on it; I am part of a larger picture, and I must not harm others because I will harm myself; and I am a bridge builder between people of different cultures.”
Enter the beauty of web 2.0 to people like me.
I’m not a fan of compartmentalizing my life. I like things, whether it’s people in my life or web sites I go to, to all be connected to one another. This makes my mom and google both very happy.
How does this affect me?
I like it when my family and my friends and all the people in my life meet. What makes this interesting is when they don’t get along. I think everyone should get along. Not like each other, just get along.
I like using google and itunes. My friend Clay swears against itunes, and probably rightfully so, but I like when things connect together easily, so I use it. I know, I know Clay, I sacrifice things to use itunes. Google connects a lot of things in my web life, like my Calendar, my way to find where I might be going, my blog reader, my connect with Fellowship Church podcasts, and even my weather, not to mention my documents (I don’t have to pay for Microsoft office again!)
Weather
