Episode 44 - Acheivements

As swiftly as it came, another week has gone. Last week I wrote about how spurred on by my western culture, I always have a longing to have a plan. A plan and a set of objectives. Hand in hand with that comes the desire to achieve, or more correctly, to successfully accomplish a set of achievements. Just as here in England the changing of the seasons out of my window mark the passage of time, so too often I feel that the amount of objectives with a tick next to them mark how much I have achieved. As I look back to what I have achieved over this last week, the list is startlingly short. I have had some friends over for company, but we didn’t really achieve much in the usual meaning of the word. I have spent most of it lying in bed. And most of what I haven’t spent in bed I’ve spent lying on the sofa. And most of what I haven’t spent lying on the sofa I have spent talking with friends and family. Now please don’t get me wrong, this is a quite pleasant way to spend my time, but it doesn’t achieve anything, or at least not by the way that we tend to like to measure such things. And I know that I’m not well and that I need to rest and its okay not to achieve anything, but sometimes, it can all seem like it’s all just a rather big waste of time. Or at least it does by such a measure of achievement.

But there are some things, some achievements, that can’t be measured or monitored, that can’t be written on a list, that can’t be ticked off or often even seen at all. And there are journeys that can’t be mapped out, whose progress can’t be charted or measured by milestones. And life is one of these journeys. I find that God uses these times when I stop trying to achieve things, to achieve things in me, to change me in a way that I could not change myself. A man never became stronger by walking into a gym and just feeling the weights, he has to pick them up. And not just once, but again and again wrestling with them. I have seen so much in this world and heard so much of God’s word. I have picked up learning from them, but rather than wrestle with them, I pursued the list of achievements that I made for myself. Never seeking to understand what these things might mean for me, or to find out who they might make me. But as I stop chasing after my endless lists, these things find me and it turns out that I don’t even need to wrestle, they just fill my mind where I leave space for them, without me even realising. Now I can’t make a list of what I’ve achieved this week, the truth is I’m not really sure and I certainly couldn’t put it into words if I could, but I know that I’m not quite the same person I was at the beginning of the week, I don’t see the world in quite the same way either, and on top of that, I see God a little clearer too. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you don’t achieve anything at all.