It’s been a year since I started this blog. I would be lying if I told you I always enjoyed doing it, that it was a simple matter of sitting down a few minutes a day, and that was all there was to it. I sweat over this thing, even if I am sitting in air conditioned comfort. I put two to four hours into each entry, edit it again and again, and never feel a sense of accomplishment because I just have to do it all again tomorrow. I fret over whether I can come up with something worth your while day after day, and many times the memories this brings back, especially the mistakes, stick with me long after I sign off the computer. I wonder then if I have the mental and emotional stamina to keep it up another year after all. Yet I do intend to and if I say I will do something, I believe I must follow through. That’s the way I was raised.
Commitment has become a rare commodity in our society. Maybe it is the prevalence of instant gratification through things like credit cards (no more waiting to save up the money for something) and society’s acceptance of sexual relationships outside of the marriage bond (no more waiting for the wedding). Perhaps it has something to do with the blame game—it’s never my fault if I do not have the self-control to see something through. If the teachers had been more interesting, I would have made better grades. If the boss were more reasonable, I could keep a job. If my wife had not been a nag, if my husband had been more responsible, this marriage might have lasted. Jesus said we should think about it before we commit to anything. He said when you commit, then run out on your commitment, you become a laughingstock. Funny how our society does not see it that way any more. Jesus did not mean to say that you should think of every possible thing that might happen before you make a commitment. Let me tell you, as many things as I considered before Keith and I married, I never in a million years imagined half of what we have been through. Shooting snakes? Chasing pigs? Milking a cow? Living without running water for a month? Bandaging bullet wounds? Sometimes I think the Lord had me wired for a different century than I wound up in.
Making a commitment means that after you consider all the possibilities, you make up your mind that no matter what happens, you will follow through as long as you are physically able. It means the same thing when we commit our lives to Him. We may never face the kind of persecution that the first century Christians did, but how are we doing when people accuse us of being full of hate just because we have standards of morality and stick with them? Are we committed enough to take that?
So on this anniversary week I am making the commitment yet again. I will write again for a whole year. Since you are reading this, I assume you are making the commitment to read. The question is, can we both become better by doing this? Commitment is nothing if growth and change do not follow.
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who behold begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he will be able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore whosoever of you that renounces not all that he has, he cannot be my disciple, Luke 14:28-32.
Dene Ward
Commitment has become a rare commodity in our society. Maybe it is the prevalence of instant gratification through things like credit cards (no more waiting to save up the money for something) and society’s acceptance of sexual relationships outside of the marriage bond (no more waiting for the wedding). Perhaps it has something to do with the blame game—it’s never my fault if I do not have the self-control to see something through. If the teachers had been more interesting, I would have made better grades. If the boss were more reasonable, I could keep a job. If my wife had not been a nag, if my husband had been more responsible, this marriage might have lasted. Jesus said we should think about it before we commit to anything. He said when you commit, then run out on your commitment, you become a laughingstock. Funny how our society does not see it that way any more. Jesus did not mean to say that you should think of every possible thing that might happen before you make a commitment. Let me tell you, as many things as I considered before Keith and I married, I never in a million years imagined half of what we have been through. Shooting snakes? Chasing pigs? Milking a cow? Living without running water for a month? Bandaging bullet wounds? Sometimes I think the Lord had me wired for a different century than I wound up in.
Making a commitment means that after you consider all the possibilities, you make up your mind that no matter what happens, you will follow through as long as you are physically able. It means the same thing when we commit our lives to Him. We may never face the kind of persecution that the first century Christians did, but how are we doing when people accuse us of being full of hate just because we have standards of morality and stick with them? Are we committed enough to take that?
So on this anniversary week I am making the commitment yet again. I will write again for a whole year. Since you are reading this, I assume you are making the commitment to read. The question is, can we both become better by doing this? Commitment is nothing if growth and change do not follow.
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who behold begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he will be able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore whosoever of you that renounces not all that he has, he cannot be my disciple, Luke 14:28-32.
Dene Ward
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