Limber

Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement
Limber

The gathering of a group of children can leave their elders feeling exhausted just from watching the amount of movement made by each child. As we observe, we can identify movements that would make our joints creak and set our muscles screaming in protest. One did perfect cartwheels across the lawn, others jumped on a trampoline with seemingly endless energy. A third group swung banners around their heads while belting out a song. A gathering of little ones offers great blasts of noise and unending movement—as if in competition for a perpetual motion machine. Ah, to be so limber and energetic.

While the antics of children may be beyond our reach as we add up the birthdays, we can challenge our thinking to stay limber and exercise the muscles of self-control. It is easy to become set in our thinking patterns and unable to even consider a different slant on our conclusions. Just as it benefits us to do exercises, even simple ones, it benefits us to exercise the skill of listening to learn how the young within our reach think. Only by listening can we hope to earn the right to thoughtfully enter the dialogue. When our response muscles reflect anger, we lose the limber ability to persuade. The exercise of self-control and reasoning is not easy or popular, but when combined with prayer and genuine love we can at least hope to maintain relationships. We can pray and leave it to God to be the one that changes minds where He chooses and in His timing. If faced with hostility, we can demonstrate love by refraining from subjects that are explosive. God has not lost His control of His world. His ways are sometimes beyond our understanding. He looks at the eons while we look at our lifetimes. The bottom line is trust God with that which is beyond our changing.