A collection of thoughts.

16Oct
by Jon Swanson

I’m Swedish. A smorgasbord of thinking seems appropriate this morning.

  • “Administration is providing the resources to help everyone else do their work.”  I made that up a couple weeks ago to describe what those of us who are administrators do. We serve others who are doing. And yet, if we get distracted into thinking that the doing matters more, the pounding or the touching or the healing, we miss our particular contribution and the whole hospital or church or community suffers.
  • Hope wrote a wonderful description of being formed by literature, in her case, by Narnia. (three years later). Although I liked Middle Earth better, I love Hope most of all.
  • For a taste of the Nehemiah enews, here’s link to “A great work“. It comes out weekly, on Sunday afternoons. (You can subscribe, too)
  • What if we believed that our greatest impact was yet to come? That everything up to this point has prepared us for what’s next? That being older than those younger needn’t be a liability? Even if everything up to this point shows that we now know what won’t work?
  • Where are the edges of my compassion? How far am I willing to go to care? How willing am I to discover where those edges are?
  • What would happen if we made our goal to see how much we could live out what Jesus called the greatest commandment: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. What would be the short and long-term steps? What would the learning plan include? What specific action could we take today?
  • When I started losing weight, I looked at why I eat as well as how. If I want to increase focus, I need to consider why I am distracted as well as how.

10 thoughts on “A collection of thoughts.”

  1. hansschiefelbein

    I appreciate the reflection on increasing focus. Also, did you mean to finish a thought on bullet point 4? Lastly, I’m still working through memorizing Colossians. Oh, and “A Great Work” is going to be very good!

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  2. Scott Brune

    Sometimes a lack of focus is because of a lack of sleep…and a lack of sleep is because of our trying to refocus all night long…from experience…I hope you are getting rest.

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  3. Susan Pieters

    Smorgasbord works for me. Makes me miss when I used to journal more, and had all these little insights that mean so much. Do it again!

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  4. Joanna Paterson (@joannapaterson)

    I really like the smorgasbord too.

    Also greatly appreciate your first point. As an administrator in a small community organisation doing great work it is sometimes hard to remember the value of the support you provide to help others do their stuff. But it’s all part of the building, the edifice, the walls.

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  5. David

    The challenge about the greatest impact possibly being yet to come made me think. I read this smorgasbord in my hotel room in Lulea in Northern Sweden where it has been snowing all day and the challenge has been one of staying dry and warm.

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