Learning From Life

I’m going to hold off on the reasons for my faith for a couple weeks so I have more time to gather my thoughts on that. Consider this an interlude.

I read a number of different blogs, but one that really catches me sometimes is internetmonk.com. He has a very interesting perspective on some things, so I enjoy reading a lot of his stuff. I was skimming one of his posts recently and recognized a way to actually get myself to journal.

Let me explain. I don’t like to journal in general. But I think I should. This combination is very annoying because it leads to sporadic attempts to journal with long periods of ignoring the idea altogether. But this blog post might just have redefined my ideas of journaling enough to get me to both like journaling and want to do it (only time will really tell).

His idea is to write a book about the lessons that life is teaching you and to go back and reread it. I’ve mostly viewed journaling as an emotional outlet and so have almost never even attempted to read old entries. But this gives the idea value now (I have to be thinking about what lessons I’m learning) and for the future (because I get to maintain those lessons).

This also manages to mesh well with my view of salvation history and what we are supposed to do with it. The Israelites were commanded to remember certain events in their history because those events taught them lessons about who God was, is and will be. If I can cultivate this kind of thinking on the small day to day things I can also integrate in this kind of salvation history thinking.

Beyond the personal application, lessons also seem like something that could be shared with other people. In fact from the little I can derive from friend’s posts about their journaling and what they share of it there seems to be a few people in my social circle that already do this. The hard lessons might not be shared immediately or with everyone, but the can benefit more than just yourself.

Basically, I like the idea that IM mentions in one of his paragraphs about learning from life. I may not have a wife to journal about like he does, but I surely have a lot of life to learn from. Ask me about my journaling in the future to see if I’m doing it, and perhaps some of the lessons I learn will show up on here to be shared with all of you.