I wonder how effective I am in evaluating myself. I'm in the process of considering something and as part of that process I've been asked to do a self-evaluation to determine if I am qualified. The basic idea is do you have these qualities, are you developing these qualities or do you not have them at all and based on that do you qualify for the position. I struggle with answering most of them with anything other than developing these qualities. The reason is that I know there is room for growth in almost every area of my life. So how do I say I've achieved these specific qualities when really I am closer today than I was 5 years ago, but I still don't demonstrate them all of the time. I think it would be easier for someone else to fill out my self-evaluation for me. (Any takers?) I need at least a scale of 1 to 10 on these questions to allow for me to distinguish which qualities I do demonstrate better than the others. Oh well, at least I am not graded on this assignment.
Now on to a totally unrelated thought. I am reading "Surprised by Hope" by N.T. Wright to discuss with a couple of friends of mine as we go through it. This is a tough book for me to read. I struggle with reading books that are heavy on the academics or philosophy since I tend to be a bottom line, how does this apply in the real life type person. (Probably explains why I didn't study very much in high school and college. Well, that and the fact there always seemed to be much more interesting things to do with my time than study.) So as I am struggling with reading through the finer points of the case he is laying out (Inside screaming you could have stated this in a paragraph and not taken an entire chapter to say it. I don't need all of the background to convince me.) when one of his points hits the mark with me. I think as Christians we have maybe once again focused on one small detail and missed the bigger picture. Christmas is probably the one time of the year that we as a church gear up for more than any other. We sing Christmas carols, have whole sermon series devoted to the birth of Christ and make it a six week celebration. Christ birth is significant, but not compared to how we treat Easter. Yeah, we focus on Easter, but not with the same enthusiasm and passion. It draws a big crowd for that one Sunday and we sing some really slow songs about it (aren't there any more upbeat songs that we can find for our Easter services?), but not much more emphasis is placed on it. Here is where the light bulb came on for me. The birth of Jesus is talked about in a couple of chapters in the Gospels, the resurrection is what the entire old testament is leading up to and what the rest of the new testament is based on. So what do we focus on? The couple of chapters of course. Much like how we pull our favorite verses out, but choose to ignore the other ones we don't like quite as much. If I get nothing else out of this book, at least it has adjusted my focus back to seeing where my hope as a Christian should be focused.
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Quicky response
I am really learning to view life as a process. I like the image that Jesus uses in his sample prayer when he talks about the way it is on earth versus heaven. The beauty of that prayer for me is that it's a prayer. It's a request with the realization that things are one way, but that they could be another. I always view myself as somewhere in between. And some days are better than others.
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