Something New Every Day!

The line is, or should I say, the old proverb reads, ‘Old habits die hard’. Yes I know the other one, Can’t teach old dogs new tricks. What we are saying is, people find it difficult to change their accustomed behaviour. And I don’t care who you are or how long you have lived, it’s true. It’s true for you and it’s true for me. But. And you knew there would be a but. But, some of us accept change and work with it more easily than others. Our world is changing quickly. Technology and electronic gadgetry come at us constantly and most, if not all of us, are left in the dust. That is unless that is your expertise or profession. I don’t know how an iphone works. Well I do but I don’t personally know how to make it work.

Last week as I sat at the airport, I decided to go on the internet with my ipad. First time getting this thing going. Only had it 5 months. Well, I tried what I knew and nothing. Finally I saw a pilot sitting doing his emails on his iphone and thought he might know. He didn’t have a clue. So, I played around for some time and finally figured it out on my own. My next thought was, can I do this again? Just so you know, I have mastered that part of the ipad but now I have to learn how to impute all my hard copy stuff in my day planner over to the ipad. Maybe another 6 months.

I just read an important article this morning that was produced by MIT. It tells why old habits die hard. In a nutshell it has something to do with the electron/neutron connections in the brain that have to be re-routed when we move from one way of doing things to another. And the memory bank of our mind will revert to the default or original path when something rekindles the original habit. The article ends with saying it’s similar to running on autopilot. Simple, right?

The outcome of this research, in my own mind is, Do something new every day and stay away for forming many habits. Not easy for any of us because, the reasons we form habits in the first place is because it makes us feel good and it gets us through our days where we don’t have to analyze our every move we make.

Now we get to church. It too can become a habit. Sometimes good and sometimes not so good. We never want to be in the habit of just going to church and going through the motions. Meeting God face to face on autopilot cannot be good. We want every encounter with our great and loving God to be fresh and new each and every time we encounter Him. How about we start this journey together by making our coming to God in prayer first thing in the morning the habit part? Something we do each and every day. But then, change how we talk to our Father and what we talk to Him about. And do it as something new, something dynamic and something fresh and exciting. Are you with me? Remember, this is just the start of something new with Jesus.

Something to think about.

Rob