In your twenties, you think you know everything. In your thirties, when you start to have children, you quickly find out you don’t and you are afraid of what you don’t know. You realize you should never stop learning.
Your forties are a time of figuring out who you are and you start to feel comfortable with life and family. But you are also busy running everyone where they need to go and so you may put off the learning stuff. In your fifties, man, life is good and manageable. You are learning what is really important and you want to make the most of it before you retire. Hopefully, you’ve learned how to save some money and you are working a job that you love. You’ve figured out that you can’t eat everything you want and some sacrifices have to be made in order to keep good health.
I’m approaching my sixties next week. Yes, the big 6-0. And in this stage of life, I feel so excited to see what God has in store. Do I feel old? Not at all! Though, my body is letting me know it can’t do all the things it did in my 20’s or 30’s as quickly or as gracefully! lol.
Feeling old is a mindset. “You’re as young as you feel.” is a true statement. You can never stop learning and trying new things and experiences.
Get Back to Life
You won’t live life to the fullest from your rocking chair, although I recommend a rocking chair over a couch or stationary recliner any day. In a rocking chair, you are always moving. The “body in motion tends to stay in motion” mindset has some truth but you can’t live life from a rocking chair. Get out there and live it to the fullest. Life is best lived in relationship with God and others.
I’m finally starting to feel like people are wanting to get back to living. Two years of a pandemic and people realize we can’t live shut up in our homes. Hopefully, we’ve learned something from this experience and how to best handle it when it comes back around again. We have to keep learning.
Learning has a process. You can read all you want and have great knowledge, but if you don’t ever apply or act on what you have learned, it’s just knowledge. I have a ton of books on my bookshelves. I’ve read most of them. I am full of knowledge,(or something lol) Some of it I’ve retained, but what good is “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” if I don’t apply and use the principles laid out in the book?
Lenten Challenge
Let’s put our ‘never stop learning’ into action. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent and I would like to challenge all my friends: Invite a couple of your friends over once a week for some coffee or tea, a muffin, and some conversation. Get out your Bibles and just read a small section of some Scripture. Random is good. One chapter anywhere in the Gospels will do. Talk about what you just read. What stands out to you? What speaks to you?
Something amazing happens when we read Scripture. Each of us gets something different out of it. It’s good to hear what each of us understands in what we read because we are all in different places in our lives. That’s the beauty of life, friends. We can all listen and learn from each other’s experiences. Someone may shed some light on a problem that you have been struggling with for awhile.
Let’s make this your year of learning. We aren’t going to just read, we are going to read and then apply what we’ve read. We are going to let Scripture speak to us about how to live life to the fullest and then we’re going to ACT on it. 2022 is going to be your best year yet! I know it’s going to be mine.
Bible Reading
The whole chapter of Matthew 6 is excellent but let’s just use Matthew 6:9-15 as an example: (Copied from the USCCB website.) “9 This is how you are to pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread; 12 and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; 13 and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.”
Read this passage a couple times over in your mind. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your mind one word or phrase that resonates with you. What’s yours? Mine was “your will be done”. (I tend to want to control life with my will.) The word that stands out to you will be different for each of us because that’s the richness of God’s love. He never wants us to stop learning about His love. So how can you apply your word or phrase to your day today? Write it down on a piece of paper and put it in a place where you can see it often. Put it in your phone. Let it pop up as a reminder.
Gratitude
As we gather with friends and read and ruminate on Scripture, you will be amazed at how full life will feel and how much you will learn about your friends. It will deepen our love and relationships with each other and with God. We will enter Easter with such gratitude.
As I head into my sixtieth year, I am so grateful just to be alive. My mother and both of my grandmothers didn’t make it this far. I feel blessed for every day I get to spend with family and friends. I’m going to live the rest of life rejoicing (my word from yesterday’s study) and you should, too!
Writing and sharing my heart with you guys is a blessing to me and I hope it blesses you, too. Never stop learning and applying what you have learned.
God bless.–Barb
