Grab the Pendulum......

....and hold it in the middle.

So often, we go to extremes unnecessarily. Whether it be language learning, spiritual things, or thinking outside the box, we tend to be at either end, rather than somewhere closer to a healthy middle.

Language Learning
Once upon a time, people who were coming to work in many countries in our area of the world were sent to France for a year to learn French. At the time, it made sense considering that most of these countries were former French colonies and the official language taught in the schools was French. Unfortunately, over time people discovered that the French spoken in France and the French spoken here were not exactly alike. It also came to be realized that only the educated actually spoke it. People would instead speak their heart language, their tribal tongue. So to really reach to the heart of people, those that came here to work really needed to learn the tribal tongue. So a shift was made to learn heart languages. While the work that the people came to do was able to be more effective, the people had troubles when they traveled outside of the area that spoke that tribal tongue or even to get necessary government paperwork done. We are now grabbing that pendulum and having people learn the national language as opportunity presents itself, but sticking to the tribal tongues for the purpose of the Main Thing!

Spiritual Matters
Before you jump to conclusions, I am not talking about sacrificing the Truth in anyway. There is but One Way, One Truth, and One Life. What I want to address is how we in America are so ready to go to the hospital or write off something that is spiritual as something physical.  People wonder why there is so much demon possession and the like overseas but not in America. I think there are in
America, but it gets written off as some sort of mental illness. Are there mental illnesses? Yes. Is every person who has an issue mentally ill? Probably not. We prefer to give it a name and a prescription. Where we live, it is all spiritual.  A friend's son was having seizures. She sought treatment for him which took her to what many would call "witch doctors."  It came about that he was found to have demons. Could he have truly had some chemical imbalance or physical injury causing him to have seizures? Sure. Does that mean that he did not initially or eventually have a demon? Nope.  We need to pull that pendulum back to the middle. We in America need to be more open to the idea that there are unseen spiritual forces at work all around us. Maybe one day some of the people here will stop seeing "a demon around every bush."

Outside the Box or Inside the Box
I was having a conversation with a teammate the other day. She confessed to being an outside the box thinker. Rephrase she professes to be a take out of the box, take it apart, and totally reconstruct it as something different thinker.  I told her that those of us inside the box need people outside the box to come up with new ways to reach people. However those outside the box need inside the box people to give them help with logistics and boundaries with which to work, especially when you work for a company. We need to grab the pendulum in the middle and embrace both sides. We need to step out of our comfort zones and yet not stray from the Word. I am an inside the box thinker, but I am so grateful for this outside the box thinker.  She challenges me often. I will write more about that in another post.