Everyone loves a formula.
We spend millions (billions?) of dollars seeking the perfect, easy way to whittle our waistlines. We spend hours (days?) googling tips on reducing clutter, improving relationships, decorating our homes (Pinterest, anyone?).
Christian bookstores are filled with tantalizing titles that promise a quick and effortless method for happiness and holiness.
We just want someone to tell us what to do, when to do it and exactly how to do it–we want life to work like a math problem: 2+2=4.
Sometimes, for a season, it looks like a formula might work.
But there is nothing predictable about life. And as long as people are involved, there’s no reliable method to accurately predict outcomes.
It’s just not that simple.
Looking for the perfect equation to balance life’s challenges distracts me from the life I’m actually living. It offers false hope that one day, some way and somewhere, things will be “perfect”.
It seduces me into thinking that people behave like numbers and that I can size them up, put them in the math machine and turn out identical and predictable products.
Burying a child rips that notion right out of your head.
Nothing predictable about that.
There are no shortcuts. No pat answers. No perfect formulas.
Life is relationship.
With God,
with people,
with ourselves.
In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.
Ephesians 4:2-3 MSG
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