We all have a limp that relentlessly dogs our steps, causing us at times to be dog-tired as we work against our limp in order to keep our lives sufficiently erect. For some of us, our limp is so slight and relatively minor that it’s really quite difficult to detect.  For others of us it’s blatantly obvious, causing us to lurch through life with unsteady and uncertain steps.  To whatever degree we limp, we all walk with a limp.  

There are those of us whose limp is clearly physical, rendering its effect on our cadence as painfully obvious.  Then there are those of us whose limp is emotional, or relational, or spiritual.  It might find its origins in a relationship gone bad, or a life gone nowhere, or hope gone away.  The possibilities are as endless as the ways in which each of us limp.  But we all walk with a limp. 

Shep– Running with a Limp

His name was Bob Shepherd.  My Dad called him “Shep” for short.  The name stuck with him throughout the length of their friendship, ultimately going to the grave with both of them.  Dad and Shep mutually shared an array of marvelous life experiences that made them the best of friends. 

Shep’s limp was polio.  His left leg hung a full three inches shorter than his right leg, profoundly throwing his body from left to right with a heavy pendulum-like cadence that should have toppled him with each step.  But Shep mastered his limp in a manner that his cadence was a match for anyone who would walk the road of the life with him.  Indeed, Shep walked with a limp.  But as Shep found out, a limp need not be limiting. 

The Assumption

Our limps carry an assumption.  And typically the assumption is that the limp will be limiting despite the limit of our efforts to make it otherwise.  Our goal is to limit how limiting we think our limp might be.  It’s all about minimizing the limp which casts the limp always and forever as a disability and a liability, thereby completely robbing it of possibility.  

Getting Close to Normal

Or we set about the task of defining“normal,” and we determine that whatever “normal” is, we’re not normal.  Then we determine exactly how far our limp has put us from “normal.”  It becomes a grand crusade to get as close to “normal” as we can, rather than understanding that we can create an entirely “new normal” that can be far more impressive than the bland “normal” that we’re chasing.   

Surrender

For some of us we surrender to our limp,feeling that the nature of our limp is forever beyond our ability to offset in any manner despite our most aggressive efforts to do so.  We grieve whatever loss our limp has thrust into our lives, and we chart a defeated future that’s now mapped out by whatever our limp happens to be. 

The Possibilities of the Limp

Is it possible that our limp is the very thing that allows us to run?  And without a limp, could we in reality run?  Have we been so entangled in assumptions, and so enslaved to some definition of normal,and have we embraced a defeated posture of surrender for so long that we’ve missed the potential inherent in the limp? Is a limp the very thing that distinguishes us from others in a way that gives us a powerful platform from which to influence others?  Does a limp give us distinctive experiences that others will never have the privilege of experiencing?  Could it be that such a glimpse dramatically expands our view of life, while our limp profoundly extends our experience of life?  If so, then our limp could very well be the greatest gift and the most profound opportunity that will beset this life of ours.  Like Shep, we can run with a limp. 

Limp and Legacy

Our limp could potentially be one of the greatest assets that we will ever possess. And so as we consider our limps, it is my hope that we see the tremendous possibilities in them and the privilege of having them.  Like Shep, may we master our limp in a manner that our cadence is a match for anyone who would walk the road of the life with us.  May we run with a limp in a way that we could never do so without one.

Slavery as an institution is pretty far removed from the minds of most of us residing here in 21st century America.  Slavery sits back plenty far enough in the faded, yellowed and brittle pages of history to create a more than comfortable chasm between us and itself. We view that chasm of time and social development and modernism as broad enough to keep slavery from leaping from the past across that chasm into the present.  The idea of slavery seems to evoke dusty black and white tin-type images of the Civil War, the expansive plantations of the Deep South, bloodied chains, inhuman whippings, and wild-eyed slaves fleeing through swamps, thick underbrush and the wilderness of their own fear. 

Those kinds of pictures have become our definition of slavery; the visual that creates a picture of what slavery is.  That definition is nearly exclusive, making our definition of slavery so incredibly tight that we can’t see any other kind of slavery at all.  And if we don’t see slavery, we assume freedom. That assumption in and of itself can be enslaving.

Slavery to Ignorance

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”  Ignorance is being oblivious,to one degree or another, to the obvious. It’s not seeing what actually ‘is’ to the point that whatever it ‘is’that ‘is,’ isn’t . . . at all.  It’shaving no recognition of something that exists despite how very real and very powerful that thing might be.  It seems that kind of living can be freeing in some cases, and horrifically dangerous in others.  The worst kind of ignorance is when we’re ignorant that we’re ignorant. At that point slavery leaps out of tin-types and into our worlds. 

Ignorance can open the doors to a lot of things and give a whole lot of space for a whole lot of things to exist in our lives.  Yet I think that ignorance of slavery or our enslavement is one of the worst things of all.  To be ignorant and to be enslaved at the same time seems to be the absolute worst kind of slavery since we don’t even know that we’re enslaved.

What Enslaves Us?

How many things enslave us?  We tend to see that things demands things of us, that we struggle with certain behaviors or attitudes, that we have our holes to dig ourselves out of, and our mountains to climb over.  We look at our lives and see what we need to change, what should be altered, where we need the proverbial “nip n’ tuck,” a bit of “cut and paste,” or maybe a little bit of Botox for the personality.  We likewise see the pieces of ourselves that need to be entirely eliminated in some sort of wholesale,demolition-like fashion.

We see our foibles, the fallacies of false fronts, our warts and things that warrant our attention.  We know that we’re not where we should be and that where we should be isn’t anywhere along the road of where we’ve been going.  We know at times that our values have been compromised, our integrity has been marred, and that far too often our morality has had the air completely sucked out of it.  We know that we haven’t been accountable when we should have been, we haven’t apologized when we should have, and that we’ve never restored even half of what we’ve stolen along the road of our lives.  We know.

Ignorance in Action

Yet, we tuck these things in the file of ignorance and then we file it away in the filing cabinet of forgetfulness.  In reality, we walk with all of this stuff hanging on with claws embedded in our hearts, and roots entwining our souls.  Yet we ignore them.  We skip and cavort through life to some sort of fabricated tune whose verses sooth us with lyrics that all is good and our lives are squeaky clean and polished to a mirrored surface. 

Or we manipulate ourselves into believing that whatever good that we have is good enough.  That life is more about the business of survival which doesn’t afford us the larger luxury of introspection, personal evaluation and the sweaty rigor of change. We don’t see anyone else focusing on all that negative stuff and so we assume that it must not be all that bad or everyone else would be focusing on it . . . wouldn’t they?  We find some comfort in the belief that overall we’re good people and at least we try to do the good thing even if we don’t end up doing the good thing.  We create expansive and ornate rationalizations to justify ignorance, and we do a bang up job of creating them.  We lull ourselves into belief that in the end, all of that stuff really doesn’t matter all that much anyway and that it will sort of eventually fall off behind us and kind of blow off the road of our lives,  somehow getting lost somewhere in the wilderness of our journey . . . so we think.  Therefore, we settle in ignorance and let ignorance give all of these things space to enslave us.

Our Enslavement

We are a peculiar people indeed.  We tend to focus on the tasks that will either achieve our goals or keep our heads above water, whatever our situation might be.  We’re notorious for feeding,watering and carefully attending to all the superficial stuff, but we put the real stuff out of sight behind the impermeable veil of ignorance.  And we live as slaves to that stuff.  We work to tactfully or not so tactfully counter the real stuff and we futilely attempt to offset it by managing and manipulating the superficial things and focusing on the things that don’t hit us too hard or upset us all too much.  Yet all of our efforts to offset all of the things stored in ignorance are wholly insufficient.  We live trying to change things by ignoring them.  We attempt to resolve them by countering them with something else that isn’t as difficult or problematic dealing with.  We try to cheat ourselves to health and wholeness. 

The end result is slavery to those things we’re chosen to ignore.  They drive us to futility attempting to compensate for them by ignoring them.  They pound and thunder and bend us from behind the veil of ignorance.  They dog our steps and flog our minds.  They draw us down and drag us out.  They impale us as they impact us.  In short, we become subject to them whether we wish to acknowledge its happening or not.  We become so enslaved by our own foolish and short-sighted vision that we become ignorant to that which enslaves us.  When that happens, we become slaves in the most awful manner possible.

Refute and Refuse Ignorance           

We refute and refuse ignorance by being honest about our weaknesses and failures. We acknowledge and bring to the forefront all of those things, we work to work through them with diligence and beat them by resolving them.  In that way our enslavement can truly end.

Slavery as an institution is pretty far removed from the minds of most of us residing here in 21st century America.  Slavery sits back plenty far enough in the faded, yellowed and brittle pages of history to create a more than comfortable chasm between us and itself. We view that chasm of time and social development and modernism as broad enough to keep slavery from leaping from the past across that chasm into the present.  The idea of slavery seems to evoke dusty black and white tin-type images of the Civil War, the expansive plantations of the Deep South, bloodied chains, inhuman whippings, and wild-eyed slaves fleeing through swamps, thick underbrush and the wilderness of their own fear. 

Those kinds of pictures have become our definition of slavery; the visual that creates a picture of what slavery is.  That definition is nearly exclusive, making our definition of slavery so incredibly tight that we can’t see any other kind of slavery at all.  And if we don’t see slavery, we assume freedom. That assumption in and of itself can be enslaving.

Slavery to Ignorance

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”  Ignorance is being oblivious,to one degree or another, to the obvious. It’s not seeing what actually ‘is’ to the point that whatever it ‘is’that ‘is,’ isn’t . . . at all.  It’shaving no recognition of something that exists despite how very real and very powerful that thing might be.  It seems that kind of living can be freeing in some cases, and horrifically dangerous in others.  The worst kind of ignorance is when we’re ignorant that we’re ignorant. At that point slavery leaps out of tin-types and into our worlds. 

Ignorance can open the doors to a lot of things and give a whole lot of space for a whole lot of things to exist in our lives.  Yet I think that ignorance of slavery or our enslavement is one of the worst things of all.  To be ignorant and to be enslaved at the same time seems to be the absolute worst kind of slavery since we don’t even know that we’re enslaved.

What Enslaves Us?

How many things enslave us?  We tend to see that things demands things of us, that we struggle with certain behaviors or attitudes, that we have our holes to dig ourselves out of, and our mountains to climb over.  We look at our lives and see what we need to change, what should be altered, where we need the proverbial “nip n’ tuck,” a bit of “cut and paste,” or maybe a little bit of Botox for the personality.  We likewise see the pieces of ourselves that need to be entirely eliminated in some sort of wholesale,demolition-like fashion.

We see our foibles, the fallacies of false fronts, our warts and things that warrant our attention.  We know that we’re not where we should be and that where we should be isn’t anywhere along the road of where we’ve been going.  We know at times that our values have been compromised, our integrity has been marred, and that far too often our morality has had the air completely sucked out of it.  We know that we haven’t been accountable when we should have been, we haven’t apologized when we should have, and that we’ve never restored even half of what we’ve stolen along the road of our lives.  We know.

Ignorance in Action

Yet, we tuck these things in the file of ignorance and then we file it away in the filing cabinet of forgetfulness.  In reality, we walk with all of this stuff hanging on with claws embedded in our hearts, and roots entwining our souls.  Yet we ignore them.  We skip and cavort through life to some sort of fabricated tune whose verses sooth us with lyrics that all is good and our lives are squeaky clean and polished to a mirrored surface. 

Or we manipulate ourselves into believing that whatever good that we have is good enough.  That life is more about the business of survival which doesn’t afford us the larger luxury of introspection, personal evaluation and the sweaty rigor of change. We don’t see anyone else focusing on all that negative stuff and so we assume that it must not be all that bad or everyone else would be focusing on it . . . wouldn’t they?  We find some comfort in the belief that overall we’re good people and at least we try to do the good thing even if we don’t end up doing the good thing.  We create expansive and ornate rationalizations to justify ignorance, and we do a bang up job of creating them.  We lull ourselves into belief that in the end, all of that stuff really doesn’t matter all that much anyway and that it will sort of eventually fall off behind us and kind of blow off the road of our lives,  somehow getting lost somewhere in the wilderness of our journey . . . so we think.  Therefore, we settle in ignorance and let ignorance give all of these things space to enslave us.

Our Enslavement

We are a peculiar people indeed.  We tend to focus on the tasks that will either achieve our goals or keep our heads above water, whatever our situation might be.  We’re notorious for feeding,watering and carefully attending to all the superficial stuff, but we put the real stuff out of sight behind the impermeable veil of ignorance.  And we live as slaves to that stuff.  We work to tactfully or not so tactfully counter the real stuff and we futilely attempt to offset it by managing and manipulating the superficial things and focusing on the things that don’t hit us too hard or upset us all too much.  Yet all of our efforts to offset all of the things stored in ignorance are wholly insufficient.  We live trying to change things by ignoring them.  We attempt to resolve them by countering them with something else that isn’t as difficult or problematic dealing with.  We try to cheat ourselves to health and wholeness. 

The end result is slavery to those things we’re chosen to ignore.  They drive us to futility attempting to compensate for them by ignoring them.  They pound and thunder and bend us from behind the veil of ignorance.  They dog our steps and flog our minds.  They draw us down and drag us out.  They impale us as they impact us.  In short, we become subject to them whether we wish to acknowledge its happening or not.  We become so enslaved by our own foolish and short-sighted vision that we become ignorant to that which enslaves us.  When that happens, we become slaves in the most awful manner possible.

Refute and Refuse Ignorance           

We refute and refuse ignorance by being honest about our weaknesses and failures. We acknowledge and bring to the forefront all of those things, we work to work through them with diligence and beat them by resolving them.  In that way our enslavement can truly end.

You ever notice that we seem to be on this relentless quest where we’re scrutinizing ourselves raw in order to ascertain what we think our flaws, our foibles, our weaknesses and our warts are?  We put ourselves under some sort of minutely dissecting microscope with skewed lenses in order to ferret out all of our little imperfections.  We incessantly crawl around on all fours with our eyes mere centimeters from the surface of our lives, scratching and picking and sorting so that everything that we are is entirely clean, socially acceptable, without cultural blemish and perfectly instep with whatever it is that we’ve chosen to determine our steps.  With our noses to the ground on an outrageously mad hunt for any and all imperfections we whittle away our lives being what we think we’re supposed to be, rather than being who we were created and designed to be.  Ever notice?

What Sets the Standard For Our Search?

There’s certainly a standard in our culture.  There are expectations that clearly outline who and what we’re supposed to be.  Those expectations are based on culturally acceptable norms that create “cookie-cutter” stereotypes.  Stereotypes perpetuate the cultural norms by encasing them in some kind of frozen blocks so that they automatically perpetuate themselves in any and all places. An unknown author wrote, “Stereotypes are devices for saving a biased person the trouble of learning.”  The worse bias that we can have is a bias about ourselves as it saves us the trouble of learning that we’re a whole lot more than we thought ourselves to be.  A bias also saves an incessantly busy culture the time of really looking deeply into itself in order to ascertain the wealth within it.  And so we press and contort ourselves in order to fit into whatever box the cultural stereotype has designed. 

Society too often creates a “one size fits all” kind of mentality.  There’s an assumption that there are slots to fill and we must fill the slots.  Find your place, get in it and stay there.  Figure out whatever the cadence is and march accordingly.  Find your box, move in,decorate it, set up shop and be happy. What color is your parachute, what’s your social standing, what’s your breeding and background, what’s your disposition, what’s your passion, what’s your career, and how’s your personality wired? Once you’ve figured all that out, set it aside, take a number, get inline and realize you’re just one of the crowd. 

In many cases, the standards of society are good, meaningful and productive. There are a large number of societal standards that are worthy of our emulation.  However, society too often sets standards for society, not the individual. Society often wants it clean, uncomplicated, tight and easy, so just find your place in line and get it in. Because that’s often the mindset, cultural expectations are designed to fulfill and achieve that mindset.  In succumbing to it, we lose our individuality and sacrifice the resources of that individuality.

Discovering Our Uniqueness

The balance that few people seem to achieve is one where we purposefully cultivate the core of who we are, while working to slough off the biasing goo of the culture.  It’s not about a blatant disregard for cultural norms or expectations at all.  Rather,it’s being committed to our uniqueness as a person rather than being rigorously force-fit into whatever the culture wants to force-fit us into.  It’s realizing that when we maximize who we are, we are then of maximum benefit to society and the world around us.  Yet, before we can be authentically “us” we must determine who or what that “us” is. In more effectively making that determination, there are a few thoughts you might want to start with:  

Understanding Our Limitations

First, healthy self-evaluation takes place when we’re frankly honest about our limitations.  Sometimes our limits should be exactly that .. . our limits.  Wisdom often involves knowing when to stop, when far enough is far enough, and when it’s legitimately time to invest our energies elsewhere. Limitations exist for reasons. It’s not about giving up or surrendering or being weak-willed or passively apathetic.  It has nothing to do with being sheepish, shy, insecure or outright scared.  Rather, limitations let us know when something is completed, that further work on our part is unnecessary, that anything beyond this point is squandered energy, and that we need to direct our resources toward the next place in our lives.

Developing Realistic Expectations

Second, effective self-evaluation takes place when we’re realistic about our expectations.  Our expectations can be too high, too low,entirely misdirected, or so vague that we couldn’t even tell someone what they were.  Expectations define what we expect of ourselves and they typically say volumes about how we feel about ourselves.  Lack of expectations either suggests a sloth-like laziness, a blatant ignorance about life, a disregard for the gift of life and the shot we have at it, or a glaring lack of self-confidence.  Realistic expectations cannot be the stuff of wildly irresponsible ideas or the product of fear-based barriers.  They should reflect the genuine capabilities of our uniqueness which will create the most balanced environment within which our uniqueness can flourish. 

Self-Evaluation that’s Outside of Our Vision

Third, healthy self-evaluation occurs when we view ourselves through the template of a belief system that calls us out, up and beyond our own humanity to believe in our ability to embrace something infinitely higher and terribly more profound than the lax designs of a mediocre culture.  It’s believing that the vision of who we can be is dramatically limited by our vision of who we can be.  It’s believing that something greater than us has something a whole lot greater in mind for us.  If we’re not careful, we forfeit vision for confining rubrics because they seem more reasonable and a whole lot more doable.  We then embrace a pathetic and unnecessary compromise that spreads the infesting germ of mediocrity throughout our lives.  We can kill the germ of mediocrity by looking back at ourselves through eyes of something a whole lot bigger than us that sees us as big as we really are.

We Are More

Few of us do any kind of self-evaluation with anything remotely resembling the kind of depth that unleashes us.  We are diminished by our own assessment of ourselves; an assessment that wholly abandons our uniqueness.  We rarely embrace a framework that even comes close to allowing us to see the immensity of who we are; that based on that understanding beckons us to be humbled in the stunning recognition of who we are, and that challenges us to draw upon the resources around us to build upon the immense resources within us.  We are more than we presume ourselves to be;much, much more.  

You ever notice that we seem to be on this relentless quest where we’re scrutinizing ourselves raw in order to ascertain what we think our flaws, our foibles, our weaknesses and our warts are?  We put ourselves under some sort of minutely dissecting microscope with skewed lenses in order to ferret out all of our little imperfections.  We incessantly crawl around on all fours with our eyes mere centimeters from the surface of our lives, scratching and picking and sorting so that everything that we are is entirely clean, socially acceptable, without cultural blemish and perfectly instep with whatever it is that we’ve chosen to determine our steps.  With our noses to the ground on an outrageously mad hunt for any and all imperfections we whittle away our lives being what we think we’re supposed to be, rather than being who we were created and designed to be.  Ever notice?

What Sets the Standard For Our Search?

There’s certainly a standard in our culture.  There are expectations that clearly outline who and what we’re supposed to be.  Those expectations are based on culturally acceptable norms that create “cookie-cutter” stereotypes.  Stereotypes perpetuate the cultural norms by encasing them in some kind of frozen blocks so that they automatically perpetuate themselves in any and all places. An unknown author wrote, “Stereotypes are devices for saving a biased person the trouble of learning.”  The worse bias that we can have is a bias about ourselves as it saves us the trouble of learning that we’re a whole lot more than we thought ourselves to be.  A bias also saves an incessantly busy culture the time of really looking deeply into itself in order to ascertain the wealth within it.  And so we press and contort ourselves in order to fit into whatever box the cultural stereotype has designed. 

Society too often creates a “one size fits all” kind of mentality.  There’s an assumption that there are slots to fill and we must fill the slots.  Find your place, get in it and stay there.  Figure out whatever the cadence is and march accordingly.  Find your box, move in,decorate it, set up shop and be happy. What color is your parachute, what’s your social standing, what’s your breeding and background, what’s your disposition, what’s your passion, what’s your career, and how’s your personality wired? Once you’ve figured all that out, set it aside, take a number, get inline and realize you’re just one of the crowd. 

In many cases, the standards of society are good, meaningful and productive. There are a large number of societal standards that are worthy of our emulation.  However, society too often sets standards for society, not the individual. Society often wants it clean, uncomplicated, tight and easy, so just find your place in line and get it in. Because that’s often the mindset, cultural expectations are designed to fulfill and achieve that mindset.  In succumbing to it, we lose our individuality and sacrifice the resources of that individuality.

Discovering Our Uniqueness

The balance that few people seem to achieve is one where we purposefully cultivate the core of who we are, while working to slough off the biasing goo of the culture.  It’s not about a blatant disregard for cultural norms or expectations at all.  Rather,it’s being committed to our uniqueness as a person rather than being rigorously force-fit into whatever the culture wants to force-fit us into.  It’s realizing that when we maximize who we are, we are then of maximum benefit to society and the world around us.  Yet, before we can be authentically “us” we must determine who or what that “us” is. In more effectively making that determination, there are a few thoughts you might want to start with:  

Understanding Our Limitations

First, healthy self-evaluation takes place when we’re frankly honest about our limitations.  Sometimes our limits should be exactly that .. . our limits.  Wisdom often involves knowing when to stop, when far enough is far enough, and when it’s legitimately time to invest our energies elsewhere. Limitations exist for reasons. It’s not about giving up or surrendering or being weak-willed or passively apathetic.  It has nothing to do with being sheepish, shy, insecure or outright scared.  Rather, limitations let us know when something is completed, that further work on our part is unnecessary, that anything beyond this point is squandered energy, and that we need to direct our resources toward the next place in our lives.

Developing Realistic Expectations

Second, effective self-evaluation takes place when we’re realistic about our expectations.  Our expectations can be too high, too low,entirely misdirected, or so vague that we couldn’t even tell someone what they were.  Expectations define what we expect of ourselves and they typically say volumes about how we feel about ourselves.  Lack of expectations either suggests a sloth-like laziness, a blatant ignorance about life, a disregard for the gift of life and the shot we have at it, or a glaring lack of self-confidence.  Realistic expectations cannot be the stuff of wildly irresponsible ideas or the product of fear-based barriers.  They should reflect the genuine capabilities of our uniqueness which will create the most balanced environment within which our uniqueness can flourish. 

Self-Evaluation that’s Outside of Our Vision

Third, healthy self-evaluation occurs when we view ourselves through the template of a belief system that calls us out, up and beyond our own humanity to believe in our ability to embrace something infinitely higher and terribly more profound than the lax designs of a mediocre culture.  It’s believing that the vision of who we can be is dramatically limited by our vision of who we can be.  It’s believing that something greater than us has something a whole lot greater in mind for us.  If we’re not careful, we forfeit vision for confining rubrics because they seem more reasonable and a whole lot more doable.  We then embrace a pathetic and unnecessary compromise that spreads the infesting germ of mediocrity throughout our lives.  We can kill the germ of mediocrity by looking back at ourselves through eyes of something a whole lot bigger than us that sees us as big as we really are.

We Are More

Few of us do any kind of self-evaluation with anything remotely resembling the kind of depth that unleashes us.  We are diminished by our own assessment of ourselves; an assessment that wholly abandons our uniqueness.  We rarely embrace a framework that even comes close to allowing us to see the immensity of who we are; that based on that understanding beckons us to be humbled in the stunning recognition of who we are, and that challenges us to draw upon the resources around us to build upon the immense resources within us.  We are more than we presume ourselves to be;much, much more.  

Most of the challenges that we face are far bigger than us.  They have a power and a vastness to them that far exceeds whatever resources we have to bring to whatever battle we're fighting this time around.  And while we might be able to make a dent in some of these things, and while we might be able to nudge them a bit in a better direction, we rarely have the kind of impact that we would want to have.

So why are the challenges in life typically bigger than what we have on hand to fight them?  Why is it that the effects that we can have on them are marginal at best and non-existent at worst?  Why have we been positioned with such minimal abilities in the face of such monstrous liabilities?  Could it be that these realities are the evidence of God and the resource of prayer that we have been given to engage this God?  Could it be that maybe prayer is the answer that we don't believe is the answer?  Is it possible that this antiquated act of coming before God is not antiquated at all?  

Most of the challenges that we face are far bigger than us.  They have a power and a vastness to them that far exceeds whatever resources we have to bring to whatever battle we're fighting this time around.  And while we might be able to make a dent in some of these things, and while we might be able to nudge them a bit in a better direction, we rarely have the kind of impact that we would want to have.

So why are the challenges in life typically bigger than what we have on hand to fight them?  Why is it that the effects that we can have on them are marginal at best and non-existent at worst?  Why have we been positioned with such minimal abilities in the face of such monstrous liabilities?  Could it be that these realities are the evidence of God and the resource of prayer that we have been given to engage this God?  Could it be that maybe prayer is the answer that we don't believe is the answer?  Is it possible that this antiquated act of coming before God is not antiquated at all?  

Discouragement.  We all know it well because we've experienced it so many times.  We watch the world wildly spin as a result of foolish decisions, self-aggrandizing leaders, misguided movements, and abandoned values.  We watch jobs crash, marriages evaporate, children run rouge, friendships dissolve, and dreams die.  We've watched it all happen, and we stand discouraged beyond words to explain.

Yet, how do we learn to live in a manner where we can find strength to engage our discouragement?  How we can exist living being well aware that life will be full of discouragement, but that discouragement need not be the thing that causes us to surrender?  How do we find sufficient hope to press forward, fight the battles, bring the change, and make this existence better in light of everything that's working so hard to make it worse?  How do we do that?  It's by deciding how we will view things.  It's determine what our perspective is going to be.  It's not about being foolhardy or foolish or naive.  But it's about looking at our world in a way that we will become "dense to discouragement." 

Discouragement.  We all know it well because we've experienced it so many times.  We watch the world wildly spin as a result of foolish decisions, self-aggrandizing leaders, misguided movements, and abandoned values.  We watch jobs crash, marriages evaporate, children run rouge, friendships dissolve, and dreams die.  We've watched it all happen, and we stand discouraged beyond words to explain.

Yet, how do we learn to live in a manner where we can find strength to engage our discouragement?  How we can exist living being well aware that life will be full of discouragement, but that discouragement need not be the thing that causes us to surrender?  How do we find sufficient hope to press forward, fight the battles, bring the change, and make this existence better in light of everything that's working so hard to make it worse?  How do we do that?  It's by deciding how we will view things.  It's determine what our perspective is going to be.  It's not about being foolhardy or foolish or naive.  But it's about looking at our world in a way that we will become "dense to discouragement."