It goes without saying that life is full of surprises, I guess the reality is that life itself is one gigantic surprise. No man has any idea what a day may bring, we of course have our expectations, but nothing is for certain. Even if we were to confine ourselves in a room to try to seek shelter from the unexpectedness that lurks about in the real world, even still we cannot hide from the reality of illness and our nature. By making certain choices we may limit the magnitude and frequency of life’s little surprises, but the reality is that we are in control of a very small fragment of our own lives.
A coach of mine once told me you can only worry about the things you can control, this is a piece of wisdom I tap into and remind myself of on a regular basis. So many elements in life hinge on infinite variables that are beyond our influence and it is no doubt that this can be frustrating. Like running a race chained to 100 blindfolded strangers, you can try as hard as you want, but your progress will have much more to do with your ability to make something happen with the elements that you’ve been attached to than it will with your ability simply to do things.
Over the years I’ve found that my deepest moments of personal frustration, de-motivation, and futility have mostly come about when I’m trying to control the fragments of my life that really fall outside the scope of my influence. A tremendous amount of unproductive energy can be applied towards trying to change or control things that we have no ability or business changing and controlling.
The business world uses engagement letters to define the scope, or areas of responsibility, in agreements between a person providing a service and a person receiving a service. Each “engagement” sets boundaries to define where the sphere of influence, responsibility, and control stops; additionally there is often an objective, or purpose that is typically defined. One thing however is missing, that is the way in which the objective will be met while all the while staying within the scope of the agreement…purpose and power are defined, process is not.
It doesn’t really surprise me that Christ commissioned his followers in the same way. We were provided a boundary for what we control and influence and an objective to pursue…the way we operate within the constructs of those things is entirely up to us. Of course there are lots of guidelines to help optimize our pursuits and there is grace for when we wander beyond those guidelines.
The scope of our serviceh agreement to God is simple, direct, and unmistakable.
- Our purpose: Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength; love people like you love yourself
- Our Scope (what we control): the way we love and live to convey the purpose above.
Each day I’m reminded of how little I truly influence and control. I can’t control someone being rude, I can’t control my flight being delayed, despite my best efforts I can’t control really much of anything in my life. All I can control is the way I love people, the way I show people I love Christ, and the way people I love them…that’s it. When we simplify our scope in life we are empowered to do more, and to do it more effectively. Our approach to the uncontrollable wild world around us is changed not because we believe we can change it and make it something it is not, but because we accept it as it is and we don’t try to make it something that it will never be. In turn we are able to do great things because we learn to operate in the throes of reality as real people, making real change.
Often times in life we’re left with a lot of brokenness and a lot of fragments purely due to the fact that we live in a broken world, the brokenness and troubles of life are again outside of our contol. Our objective is neither to put the pieces back together, nor is it to try to change the pieces of our fragmented lives, but rather it is to take the pieces of our fragmented lives and do our best with what we have to convey LOVE. The objective is defined, the scope of control is narrow, the process of how we pursue those things is up to us.
A few weeks back I ended up watching part of the Para-Olympic games and was reminded that we are afforded a lot of choices as people when it comes to how we deal with this fragmented, broken world. A lot of the athletes I saw had pretty tragic stories, car accidents, birth defects, war related injuries, yet instead of dwelling on the brokenness of their lives and focusing on tragedy these people were focused on the fact that they have a life left to live.
It is the same in our lives, while we cannot control much of what happens to us, we can control the way we chose to deal with that which we cannot control.
Personally, I acknowledge that the more narrow my scope, the more effective I am. I am in the process of making sure I’m worried only about the simple things in my life that I control, and in doing that I’m learning to shift focus away from the infinite number of things that are outside of my realm of influence and towards the few that I do control.
Simplifying Daily,
CP
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