Oh the Places You’ll Go!
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
–Dr. Suess
To the graduates, and just about anyone making a decision this week… Peter offers this saavy advice:
Choose good. There is so much to win.
If with everything you have you are choosing to be good, you can’t be stopped. Even if you suffer for it now, you’re still better off in the long run. Don’t give anything else a second thought. Keep your hearts at attention, focused on Godly things. Keep your conscience clear so that when tough times come and you are challenged… when people throw mud and nasty words at you, none of it will stick… your good reputation will speak for itself and then they’ll wind up realizing that they need a bath – not you! After all, it’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad.
Perhaps one of the biggest decisions of our lives is what we do with our time. We get to make this choice when we choose our jobs, but this is a fraction of what we get to do with our lives. We get to re-choose what we do with our lives every day, with every hour.
There are different kinds of voices calling us to all different ways to spend our hours and the problem is to figure out which we are supposed to be doing and which is just the world telling us to do to satisfy it’s own selfish interests. How to choose, whether you’re thinking about something as big as a job or where you might contribute your energies to our church this year, is the trick.
Consider two factors:
- What YOU most need to do
- What the WORLD most needs to have done
If you really get a kick out of your work you’ve accomplished the first; but if you’re selling baubles and snake oil you might have missed the second. If you’re a nurse that can’t wait for the end of the shift or a teacher that can’t wait for the bell you might have taken care of the second but skipped the second, and odds are you aren’t really helping others much either.
The place where you need to be is where your deepest gladness and the world’s deepest hunger meets. Keep your mind focused Godly things and the rest will work itself out.
Kate Cross likes writing these posts and hopes you don’t mind reading them.
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