You Can Do Anything

Getting old has made me more brazen.  I care a (little) less about what people think of me.  I don’t have time to jack around with stuff I consider trivial and I don’t have some kind of compulsion to fix every little thing I see going wrong. 

Peter Kjeseth, if you are reading this I still remember sitting in your office and hearing you say, “Neal, you can do anything.  Why don’t you consider the mission field for your first call?”  

That was good advice and Rhonda and I had five delightful and adventurous years as a result.  And the villagers taught us as much as we taught them.  

We all knew that I really couldn't do everything.  I just took that as encouragement.  But I have learned another thing, Peter, and that is the ability to accept and even celebrate the things I can’t do.  I am driven by the command of Jesus to seek justice for the disempowered and pray that I will do so, as I am gifted, until I have no more energy.  As for how that’s done, I have to explore.  I will “push the envelope” for the gospel, but I truly believe now that, when seeking out God’s will, I occasionally do people more good by not doing because it’s not about me.  

My voice is failing.  I've also come to realize that I have a genuine disability in “reading people.”  That is, I can’t get past face-value when people speak to me.  I can’t read between the lines.  It’s a little like being color-blind I guess.  

Albert Einstein supposedly said, “The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he(she) has attained liberation from the self.”  None of us need to have an IQ of 160 to accept ourselves as we are and know that the greatest force of love in the universe is one with us too.  That’s salvation for me.

~ Neal