1 Corinthians 7:17

2,200 and Counting

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life” (1 Corinthians 7:17, The Message).

I recently received a notification of my six-year anniversary with WordPress. I’ve come a long way since that very first blog way back in July of 2010 that announced my arrival into the wild and exciting world of blogging (said with sarcasm).

I’m still not a fan of the word “blog.” It sounds like something you do that you don’t ever discuss in polite conversation, especially in mixed company. It also sounds like something you blow out of your nose when you have a cold.

In the ultimate irony, I’m slowing learning that to grow up and get to the place God created you to be, the best place to start is to learn to be content with where you are and who you are. The more you strive out of insecurity or envy, the more you find you’re vainly fighting the air while running in place. You don’t get very far that way.

The best way to find contentment is gratitude. Giving thanks makes what you have enough (as Ann Voskamp has said more than once) and it makes your life fuller and richer by putting your focus on what you have instead of what you lack.

Giving thanks opens your hands to receive more true riches from God’s hand. The problem with the prosperity gospel is that it focuses on the temporary riches that rust and fade, but the true riches that come with thanksgiving are the kind that are eternal and changeless.

I’m thankful tonight for a job that I enjoy, a cat who also moonlights as a very affordable therapist, a comfy bed, people who care about me, and a God who is crazy about me even after all these years.

I’d call that the good life.

 

FOMO?

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there” (1 Corinthians 7:17, The Message).

I was the walking definition of FOMO long before such a term ever existed. Back in my college days, I went through a period where I would wander the Union campus in search of the exciting event I feared I was missing out on. There had to be something great with lots of people involved– almost everyone except me– that if I found it and participated would drastically alter my life for the better.

I probably wasted more than a few nights chasing after these mystical and mythical moments that never materialized.

Now, FOMO (or Fear Of Missing Out) is the prevalent excuse for a lack of commitment by so many– why tie yourself down to someone or something when the possibility of something better still remains?

It seems to me that with FOMO, you do miss out. You miss out on the beautiful ordinary moment you’re in while you’re searching out the elusive and illusory moment. Wherever you are, the grass will always appear greener somewhere else.

It’s like in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe where Eustace spurns good ordinary food in hopes of getting more of that magical Turkish delight from the White Witch. He ends up with neither and with nothing but regrets.

The opposite of FOMO is celebrating the moment God gives you and finding the gifts in it. FOMO says that God is holding out on you but faith says that God is true and trustworthy in all circumstances.

The antidote to FOMO is giving thanks for what you have over fretting over what you don’t have or working about missing out on what might have been. The cure is to see every moment as part of God’s plan to work all things together for your good. Even those ordinary moments.