18 Things in 41 Years...

This blog post is a direct result of my being asked to speak at a dinner meeting at the church I serve.  Its nice to be asked to speak, but since these are people I speak to from a pulpit 26 Sundays a year (I am fortunate to serve with a colleague who does the preaching on the 26 other Sundays a year.), I felt a little pressure to offer them something other than the "usual stuff."

And, since I am coming, soon enough, to the time when I will be retiring from preaching, I got to thinking of what I have learned over these forty-one years...that is worth passing on.

I came up with eighteen things.  Just eighteen.

Now, before I list the 18 things I have learned, I want to own-up to the fact that I am quite sure I have lifted the phrasing in some of what follows from others.  I have not done a really good job of keeping track of where I learned all that I learned...and the way I will say what I have learned is due, in part, to the way others have said or written similar things.  The learnings, however, are actual...and personally experienced.


My guess is that you have learned some things worth passing on in whatever your line of work, or your life experience, has been.  You should consider setting those down on paper...or entering them into a computer.  You, and others (should you care to share them) may be pleasantly surprised at what wisdom comes from reviewing the lives we have lived...and learned from.

I checked some other sources (print and electronic) and found other lists of learnings.  That's not surprising.  I did spend some time looking over one such source, titled "26 Life Lessons Learned by Age 26."  Wow.  Makes my 18 in 41 seem quite meager.  It was published on-line by Marc and Angel Chernoff in their blog, "Marc and Angel Hack Life."
I especially liked these learnings, from among their 26:
~Being an adult can be fun when you are acting like a child.
~Greed will bury even the lucky eventually.
~Chance is a gift, so act on chance when given the opportunity.
~Motivation comes in short bursts.  Act while its hot.
~If you never act, you will never know for sure.

So, here's a bench along life's way.  Sit a spell and see if any of these 18 things I've learned in 41 years (of ministry) are worth considering for yourself.

1. You don't need to know every detail in order to succeed.
2. Don't live in the future.  (Really, why live in the future before you've even experienced the present?)
3. Set realistic expectations.
4. There really is more than just one way to do just about everything.
5. Stop your all-or-nothing thinking.
    (~Its black or white.
     ~You're skinny or you're fat.
     ~If you don't follow this path, you are wrong.
     ~If you make a mistake, you're out of my life.
     ~If I quit my job because I don't like it, I'm a failure.
     Just quit all that nonsense!)
6. Its OK to be a lone wolf.  (Like Joel Hodgson says, "I sometimes go to my own little world, but that's okay, they know me there.")

7. People change.  (And what matters is that you respect people's changes.)
8. People never change.

(#7 and #8 seem to contradict each other.  But they only seem to.  Think about it.)

9. Don't settle.  (Don't settle for skimming the surface of life, all the good stuff is below that.)

10. Its important to never forget who you are.  (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. puts it this way: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.")
11. People are capable of both great humility and great arrogance.
12. People can be incredible liars.
13. The universe is a tough place.
14. You will be betrayed.
15. Just about everything is political.
16. You can change the things that you can change...but you will have to work at it; and it may not happen over-night.
17. The One-God-of-Us-All has done two things for you already: Created you and Redeemed you.
18. In Jesus, we can see that God loves us.  And everybody else, by the way.