Tell me, where is it in your life that you watch yourself “do nothing” but want to change? Are you not practicing? Not following a healthy diet or budget? Not writing? Not saying I forgive you? Not exercising? Not leaving a poisonous relationship that sabotages your artistic dreams? Not finishing?
Today, I had a vivid wakeup call and an awful look at what doing nothing actually means. As I listened to the news about the horrid, I mean HORRID, humanitarian disaster now in Aleppo, I learn a powerful lesson from a general. He said when we have the right and power to respond to a situation but are paralyzed by fear of the unpleasant side effects that could happen, often we don’t stop to consider what doing nothing actually means.
There are consequences for doing nothing. How can we become who we are meant to be if we do nothing, if we keep saying, “I know, I know. I need to change.”
My life doesn’t involve high-level political decisions like the Aleppo challenge, but like many of you, I’ve done nothing too many times on smaller things, thinking, “no big deal.” No more. Not after staring at that little boy, covered in dust, without family or food, standing in front of a backdrop of destroyed buildings.
Instead of wallowing in shame, let’s apologize to God and ourselves, turn, and go in the a different direction. Let’s ask ourselves: where in our lives are we doing nothing without stopping to consider that disaster–real disaster–may be on the tail end of that action?
Doing nothing is an action. It is also an action to throw off denial, look that painful disaster square in the face right here and now, punch our fists into our hips, and do something about it. We can pick up a pen, take an instrument out of its case, strap on ballet slippers, memorize a page of script, pull out a fresh canvas, risk a life change. Then we leave the results in God’s hands. He is able to do more than we ask or imagine according to His riches in Christ Jesus!
Did you recently change something that kept you from becoming? Or do you want to change something? I welcome your comments.