Before you head off for your weekend, here is a short review of three things that impacted me this week. Hope they challenge you like they did me! Have a great weekend.

#1

“There are no shortcuts in growing up. The path to maturity is long and arduous. Hurry is no virtue. There is no secret formula squirreled away that will make it easier or quicker. But stories help.

Practice Resurrection by Eugene H. Peterson

Hurry is not a virtue. Maturity takes time. There is no silver bullet, no killer-app, no elixir of health that speed up the natural process. Like water moving through the Grand Canyon, maturity takes time, consistency, some friction, and may be imperceptible in the moment. But, we as Christ followers have no other choice if we desire to be equipped for fruit-filled lives that make a difference.

#2

“Love is the quality of attention we pay to things,” poet J.D. McClatchy wrote seven decades after the brilliant and underappreciated philosopher Simone Weil observed that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

from the website The Marginalian

I am on the hunt for new ways to describe love that go beyond the usual, it is an emotion (it is not!) or it is a blunt instrument of tolerance (it is not that either!), which is why this McClatchy quote followed by the Weil quote captured me this week. We pay “quality” attention to those we love. Phones down. TV off. Worries of the day quieted. These are all signs that someone loves you. It is a generous quality about this understanding of love that makes the difference. Generous with my time, attention, even emotional availability makes the relationship a loving one. 

What does the quality of your attention say to those around you?

#3

We will have to satisfy both the objective needs of society for performance by the organization, and the needs of the person for achievement and fulfillment.

The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker

Drucker mentions a both/and situation needed for fulfillment. The organization needs as well as personal needs must be considered. For people of faith, it happens naturally in the best of cases because our faith in Christ aligns us with what is best for us (not always easy, convenient however) AND what is best for the common good (again…not always easy or convenient).