A lot of my friends don’t really get the “blog” thing. Probably if you are reading this you at least get it enough to want to read the random musings I write every so often. But the idea that I read other blogs, mostly of people I do not know and have never met?! Yeah, some people think that’s a little weird.
Mostly I read other blogs to get recipe ideas – subscribing to a blog is cheaper (free!) than subscribing to a magazine and the likelihood is I’ll actually get round to cooking more of the recipes I highlight than in the average magazine I buy.
But there are other blogs that I read just because they encourage me. Especially on greay rainy mornings like this when I am on my own in the office and even the Johnny Cash music is struggling to keep up my spirits.
And this morning I read this on the Living Proof Ministries blog (written by Beth Moore and her daughters) and somehow their words encouraged me like a letter from a good friend might. So maybe that is strange, but it is definitely appreciated today.
“I came across this lengthy quote by Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth American President… It goes like this:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without effort or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with these cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” (1910)
…I have come to realize what a miracle it is for the Lord to use us in spite of our weaknesses. We are going to make mistakes and dangit, we may even teach a passage of Scripture a tiny tiny little bit out of context at some point. Not because we want to or because we are maliciously trying to lead people astray, but because we are simply human. I am all for being trained to study the Bible. It’s the biggest passion in my life, but the truth is, we still just see through a mirror dimly. We don’t see fully yet. The truth is we may study and study and study, and then get something slightly wrong. Or think about this- maybe we are teaching a Sunday school class and we got all the doctrine/theology down perfectly, but our delivery wasn’t smooth. In fact, it sounded terrible. Well, the glorious thing is that the Lord uses the truth we taught anyway. And maybe we’ll improve the eloquence of our delivery the next time. I love it. I really do. Our fears of not getting it all right should never keep us from serving faithfully.”
