New Routine

STORY

There’s a true story of a man I have worked with who has spent his entire life believing that his ears were not symmetrical and therefore sunglasses always looked crooked on his face. He came to accept this over time, until he came in touch with mindfulness practice.

One day as he was standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom he chose to take a moment to come down from his busy mind, become present, and really look at himself. What he noticed was astonishing.

He suddenly realized that he had not been standing straight and that one shoulder was slightly lower than the other. In that moment, he chose to stand up straight and low and behold his eyeglasses were no longer crooked on his face. All this time he thought his face was lopsided in some way when in effect, it was his posture.

This story is just a metaphor for the rest of us in our lives. Over time, what do we just get used to and learn to accept that keeps us limited in how we see things? What in our lives has become routine to a point that we have lost our sense of wonder in this world?

LESSON

Do you ever get that feeling that you’re tired of the same old routine? Your tired of getting up going to work or school accomplishing the task that are placed in front of you only to go home and do the same thing you did the night before. Maybe you go home and watch TV until you fall asleep, or play games, or maybe you clean house or do chores. Whatever you do most of us have some type of routine that we fall into.

We stop and pause from time to time and have a urge to just get away from it all. See something or do something new for a change, but most of us don’t we stick to the routine. It’s that so wrong? It’s not like it’s going to upset the balance of the earth if for a change you just drive home a different way from work, or walk a different path on the way to class. Maybe instead of watching TV when you get home you will go outside and take a walk.

Jesus lived a life that I would say was far from routine. Maybe the only one and true routine that he might have would be to seek and save the lost, but each day there seemed to be a different path in which he would go. Why do you think that is? His goal was to meet as many people as possible and to save them. To share his story with them and let them decided to follow him.

How is it that if we are charged with the same instruction as Jesus (to seek and save the lost) we are not meeting more people? Why do we not go out of our way to meet someone new each day? When is the last time you meet someone new? It’s really hard to meet new people when we are stuck in our routines.

The world tells us that our time is our time and everyone else can wait. That understanding is the complete opposite of Christ. He tells us that we are here to serve others and by doing so we are to give them our time.

If we rely on human reasoning to get through life, we'll eventually be led astray. Sometimes a choice or an option appeals to us or seems right, but it really isn't. We need spiritual discernment from God to help us understand what's truly good and what isn't.

Proverbs 14:12 (New International Version, ©2010)

¹² There is a way that appears to be right,
but in the end it leads to death.