Today’s Readings: Psalm 17; Numbers 20:14-29; Matthew 5:38-48; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-5; Psalm 107
If you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality test, when it comes to the last pairing of letters (P or J) in the personality test I am a strooooooooong J. In case you aren’t familiar with the test let me tell you what those letters means. The two letters have to do with how individuals approach the decision-making process. People who are P’s (Perceivers) tend to avoid or delay final decisions. They like to keep their options open as long as humanly possible and worry that if you make a decision you might eliminate the choice that might have proven most beneficial in the long run. People who are J’s (Judgers’s) want to be decisive. The last thing on earth they want to do is drag their feet and “waste” time with too much consideration. As you can probably tell, neither of these approaches would work without folks on the other side to balance the energies. If you only had P’s involved in a project, for instance, the work at hand might never get done (really); if you only had J’s involved, you would get a quick decision – but one that might not have been the best one to make (experience has shown me this is a case more times than I would like to admit). I say all of this to let you know that today’s passage from Numbers is one that tends to drive J’s like me nuts. If I had been in Moses’ shoes, I would have been all about getting the people from Point A to Point B in the quickest, most efficient manner possible. I would have been in such a hurry that I probably wouldn’t have stopped to think to ask the King of Edom for permission to cut through his land; I would have just done it. Thankfully, Moses had a whole lot more P in him than I did – for he had the wisdom to slow down and do the right thing. The lesson I carry away from today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament is that the sacred stories of our faith remind us the world wasn’t set up to accommodate our personalities and our preferences. This means that life will have a way of pushing our buttons: it may involve too many or too few others in the process; it may involve more facts/intuition than you would like; it might depend more on the head or the heart than you would like; it may move faster or slower than you would like (Myers-Briggs folks will understand why I chose these examples). In the midst of our daily frustrations, however, we are called to do what Moses did: trust in the One who lies at the source of creation and know that eventually we will arrive. Keep that lesson in mind today as you deal with the detours that life will throw your way. Til next time…
If you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality test, when it comes to the last pairing of letters (P or J) in the personality test I am a strooooooooong J. In case you aren’t familiar with the test let me tell you what those letters means. The two letters have to do with how individuals approach the decision-making process. People who are P’s (Perceivers) tend to avoid or delay final decisions. They like to keep their options open as long as humanly possible and worry that if you make a decision you might eliminate the choice that might have proven most beneficial in the long run. People who are J’s (Judgers’s) want to be decisive. The last thing on earth they want to do is drag their feet and “waste” time with too much consideration. As you can probably tell, neither of these approaches would work without folks on the other side to balance the energies. If you only had P’s involved in a project, for instance, the work at hand might never get done (really); if you only had J’s involved, you would get a quick decision – but one that might not have been the best one to make (experience has shown me this is a case more times than I would like to admit). I say all of this to let you know that today’s passage from Numbers is one that tends to drive J’s like me nuts. If I had been in Moses’ shoes, I would have been all about getting the people from Point A to Point B in the quickest, most efficient manner possible. I would have been in such a hurry that I probably wouldn’t have stopped to think to ask the King of Edom for permission to cut through his land; I would have just done it. Thankfully, Moses had a whole lot more P in him than I did – for he had the wisdom to slow down and do the right thing. The lesson I carry away from today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament is that the sacred stories of our faith remind us the world wasn’t set up to accommodate our personalities and our preferences. This means that life will have a way of pushing our buttons: it may involve too many or too few others in the process; it may involve more facts/intuition than you would like; it might depend more on the head or the heart than you would like; it may move faster or slower than you would like (Myers-Briggs folks will understand why I chose these examples). In the midst of our daily frustrations, however, we are called to do what Moses did: trust in the One who lies at the source of creation and know that eventually we will arrive. Keep that lesson in mind today as you deal with the detours that life will throw your way. Til next time…
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