Fitbits for our walk

Yesterday three women with identical Fitbits were having a lighthearted conversation about what these devices have done for them and to them. Their laughter was over comments like this: "If my Fitbit battery needs to be charged, I make sure I stay on the couch so I don't miss any steps!"

Fitbits were developed to promote health—to help people pay attention to areas of neglect: too few steps, too slow of a pace, too much sitting. We can only laugh at our new belief that an unrecorded step is a bad step.

Discipleship tools serve a similar purpose—bring attention to areas of neglect in order to promote health. Ignoring aspects of our walk leads to a spiritual flabbiness. But as with our physical walk, a discipleship step that isn't noticed, recorded, analyzed, and reported, is still a step. It contributes to growth and strength.

Keep moving.

The generalist-specialist

There's a saying:

A specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. A generalist is someone who knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything.

But God knows everything about everything. Nothing is hidden from him. Nothing in the universe. Nothing in the atom. Every detail of every detail, he knows its composition, its function, and its relationship to every other thing. In fact he actively sustains and interacts with all things all the time.

The yeast of reality

“What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

— Jesus, in Luke 13:20,21 NIV

Does our view of reality come from:

A. What we experience on Sunday? Are people and the surrounding culture becoming more like Christ and his kingdom?

B. What we experience Monday through Saturday? Are the people of our churches becoming more like the surrounding culture?

Studies say the answer is more B than A.