I’m so glad I learned how to play Three Blind Mice on the recorder at school. It has come in handy in adult life, especially when resolving difficult situations.
I get the sarcasm, and you can find many statements like this one on social media. It’s humorous, but it can also taint our learning process. When we focus too much on what we think we don’t need to learn, we miss something. Learning is often more about the process than the content. Yes, content is important, too. We better know what we’re doing when it comes to our jobs and everyday tasks. But limiting ourselves to being considered an expert in one area and avoiding others is limiting. We can survive with some minimal familiarity of a variety of topics, but why do we try to capture just the information we need, plus a little bit more of the stuff we’re really interested in?
We don’t have to use every bit of information we gather in order to grow from the process. It is the sacrifice, the discipline, the following instruction that often challenges and grows us the most. Instead of embracing it (and enduring it with minimal complaints), we want what we want. And if we don’t see there’s something in it for us, we don’t want it. The problem is we often can’t actually see that there is something in it for us because we are too short-sighted. We don’t trust well.
We are equally as dismissive when it comes to our faith. Especially in Western culture, we try to learn for information. We don’t embrace the learning process and how a multitude of experiences might grow us more than books of facts. Familiarity in faith is a relationship. It includes truth, which sometimes comes through words and always comes in intimacy, humility, and authenticity.
Posture yourself to learn and grow today, even if that involves playing or listening to an annoying song on an annoying instrument.
Pure Purpose 