It came to me when I woke up this morning.
First of all it was the tune. There have been quite a few versions of the song, but the one that was fresh in my mind because it was the one that I had listened to most often was the one by Michael McDonald and Toni Braxton.
It is not the greatest song I’ve ever heard in my life, but this morning in particular I was paying attention to what the chorus was saying.
It is never to late to
Stop, look, listen to your heart
Hear what it’s saying
Stop, look, listen to your heart
Hear what it’s saying
Love, love, love
Today I was ending a course of study for a group of learners on employability. At the heart of it was understanding and practising effective jobsearch based on being informed, being prepared, being active, being reflective and revising action in the light of new information.
The steps in this course have to a degree been laid out by the awarding body’s requirements. Yet, thankfully for me, these were ingredients I had already experienced in my own working life.
Larger than that, though, those steps apply to life as a whole. It occurred to me that there were obvious connections between those elements and the theme of the song.
Stop – What is the point of relentlessly going on and on and on? Sure, there are benefits of working on adrenalin and maintaining momentum, but our life cycle is based on understanding that sometimes the adrenalin runs out and the momentum ebbs away. It is very healthy to actually cease activity. Sometimes your body is screaming out for it. Sometimes your whole course of life would benefit greatly from taking that on board. Experience has taught me that if you don’t choose to stop, then you might end up stopping in more abrupt and damaging ways. (Can you say, ‘crash’?)
Look – Whilst you’ve stopped it might actually be worthwhile exercising the senses to take in what’s around you. Visually it is certainly beneficial to take in the effects of what you’re actually doing. Does it really look like your life activities are producing the desired results. And by look it is not just with your physical eyes. Looking beyond the seen can help in the exercise of really acknowledging the beautiful aspects of what the activity is producing, but as well as that noticing where the discrepancies are.
Listen – Taking the time to observe what is going around you and what your efforts are producing may also give you an opportunity to listen to what God is saying. He may talk through your efforts. He may have been talking on the sidelines through the people you ignored. Having stopped what you’re doing, you no longer have the excuse of being too busy to listen. You can no longer afford to neglect what God is saying to you in life’s circumstances. God’s Word through scripture, experiences, relationships and resources is far too precious to ignore. The act of listening goes beyond the comprehension of what is being said, to truly understanding and embedding that which is being conveyed. That takes conscious effort and commitment. That is why it costs time – but time worth investing while you’ve stopped to ensure you are in line with what God wants.
Love – The deal is not to stay in the stopped position. The deal of rest, reflection and recuperation is to be ready to go at it again. The difference is that you’re not necessarily going at it in the same way. The deal is there are modifications. Some might be drastic, some might be minor, but there are suitable changes in fitting with the commission that God has give you to love. Love yourself, love your spouse, love your offspring, love your relatives, love your neighbour, love your colleagues, love your enemies, love your community, love your vocation, love life, love God with everything. There is no greater feeling of life satisfaction than knowing it was done as a labour of love and the whole process of stopping, looking and listening is to enable and equip you to that end.
We can get caught up in the routine of things and the pressure of life can force us into systems and ways of being that don’t actually help towards the very goal of life – loving and being loved. I believe the very heart of God is based on those very basic things – love and be loved. The outworking of that is expressed in many ways, but when we lose sight of that and then get mired in other demands on life, God does remind that it is never too late, never too late to …
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
Life With CD 