Changing your mind

Ephesians 5:15-16 Give careful thought, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

If you’ve ever done any boating, you know that it is essential to have a means of steering and a source of power. You need both. If you are cruising off the coast and lose your ability to steer, all the power in the world won’t do you any good. You’re at the mercy of the wind and the currents. Or, if you can steer, but you have no power, again you’re in big trouble. You may drift into rocks or hidden reefs.

These two necessities become even more essential if you are navigating through dangerous seas. You would also need an accurate navigational chart and a means of determining your own location, so that you know exactly where the obstacles are and can avoid them. Without these, disaster is almost certain.

Changing someone’s mind isn’t easy. A mind is more like a pile of millions of little rocks than a single big boulder. To change a mind, we need to carry thousands of little rocks from one pile to another, one at a time. This is because our brains don’t know how to rewire a full belief in one big haul. New neuron paths aren’t created that quickly. You might be able to get a tiny percent of someone’s mind to rewire to a new belief in a given conversation, but minds change slowly and in unpredictable ways. We have to take care that we might be changing it in the wrong direction.

Stuart Strachan founder of the “Pastor’s Workshop” suggests. “If you really want to change, it starts with your story. If you want to change the story of your life, you need to change the stories in your mind. So what story do you want to live? Do you want to experience God’s presence deeply in your own life? Do you want to be the hero in your own story? Or at least, do you want to be proud, not prideful, but proud of who God has made you to be? If so, keep reminding yourself that you are God’s beloved child, and His love for you is so immense he was willing to sacrifice his one and only son on your behalf.”

Taking time in Advent to let God to reform and realign our thinking to his way, is surely a good use of this season of waiting.

Today, Lord, we are still the people walking.

     We are still people in the dark,

          and the darkness looms large around us,

          beset as we are by fear,

                anxiety,

                brutality,

                violence,

                loss —

          a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.

 

We are — we could be — people of your light.

     So we pray for the light of your glorious presence

          as we wait for your appearing;

     we pray for the light of your wondrous grace

          as we exhaust our coping capacity;

     we pray for your gift of newness that

          will override our weariness;

     we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust

          in your good rule.

 

That we may have energy, courage, and freedom to enact

         your rule through the demands of this day.

         We submit our day to you and to your rule,

            with deep joy and high hope. Amen