Stepping Out of Our Comfort Zone

Here is a photo of 73-year old Vicki stepping out of her comfort zone, learning to play the guitar. 

Many of us seem petrified about doing something differently: changing our personality style, testing new ways to approach others, learning a new skill. 

What will people think prevents us from having fun with new people, new adventures. 

Stepping out with a new attitude brings more zest to living:

• If we take a risk to overcome our fears and our failures we grow emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.
• Those who get out of their comfort zone and try something different never get bored. 
• Don’t be afraid to fail. The most certain way to success is to try one more time.
• Don’t be afraid to struggle. The greatest weakness is giving up; the greatest strength is persistence.  
• Always doing our best is the closest we will come to perfect.
• Enhancement is about doing something fresh, imaginative and creative. 
• The more we endeavor, train, venture and stretch, the more comfortable we become. 
• When we keep practicing new approaches we become better and better at doing something that was once new. We change from being fearful to being strong, bold and courageous.

The Black Stallion Returns

A couple of weeks ago I posted on Facebook that my 96-year old mother continued to thrive. Responses by the dozens flooded back. All remembered her kindness, cheer and encouragement. The most remarkable feedback came from her 1954 fourth-grade students. 1954! Whoa Nelly!

Those 1954 students especially remembered her reading The Black Stallion each day after lunch. Mother read to Cornel and me just before tucking us in at bedtime.  Our uncles read to us. I especially remember Treasure Island, Kidnapped and the Jungle Book.

When Vicki was recovering from back surgery our daughter, Wende (a superb Audio Books-type reader) entertained us with Cheaper By the Dozen. 

On a frigid winter night I read to Vicki. Our favorites: Anne of Green Gables and Peter Pan. Unlike Peter we have become, ugh, adults and still call children books our favorites.

Reading aloud fills our hearts with tender mercies, lasting love and wisdom from bygone days.

As I look back to long-ago days I recall with fondness and respect teachers and coaches whose guidance has never departed. We may never know those whom we may influence on paths we walk each day.

The Trip Along the Way

In 1637 Pierre de Fermat wrote in the margin of Diophantus’s Arithmetica the statement that would puzzle some of the world’s greatest mathematicians for over three centuries:

It is impossible to write a cube as a sum of two cubes, a fourth power as a sum of two fourth powers, and, in general, any power beyond the second as a sum of two similar powers. For this, I have discovered a truly wondrous proof, but the margin is too small to contain it.

Fermat, celebrated for making such declarations with little confirmation, kept mathematicians scratching their heads and squaring their roots trying to discover proofs for his statements. By the 19^th century, all of Fermat’s theories had been resolved except the one above, a statement that became know as Fermat’s Last Theorem.

We will never know whether Fermat had actually discovered a correct proof of his theorem, but we do know that Andrew Wiles of Princeton University produced a 130-page proof in 1994, 357 years after Fermat wrote his tantalizing marginal note.

Although Fermat’s Last Theorem has not yet been used for practical purposes, many new ideas and numerous practical technological advances developed in solving the problem.

Sometimes the trip along the way becomes more important than reaching the end of our journey.  

Adopted from The Heart of Mathematics by Edward B. Burger and Michael Starbird

Schindler Transformed

Oskar Schindler was a drunk, a spy, a libertine and a member of the Nazi Party when he acquired the German Enamelware Factory that eventually employed 1,750 workers, a thousand of whom were Jews. 

When Schindler became aware of the atrocities against the Jews he began hiring and protecting them from deportation and death with a combination of diplomacy, flattery, and bribery. 

Schindler was quoted as saying, "I felt that the Jews were being destroyed. I had to help them; there was no choice.” 

As time went by, Schindler had to give Nazi officials ever-larger gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to protect his workers. 

His bribes eventually bankrupted him. He died a pauper in 1974. 

Was Schindler a Christian? I don’t know but his life reminded me of a passage from Romans 12:1-2: 

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (RSV).

Here are the marks of a transformed mind:

• Offering our work—the ordinary work of the ranch, the farm, the factory, the shop, and all the daily tasks we have to do every day--as an act of worship to God.
• Enjoying the pleasures of each day to show appreciation for God’s gift of life. 
• True worship is volunteering all we do everyday to God, giving our everyday life to him. 
• To worship and serve God, we must undergo a change, not of our outward form, but of our inward personality. 
• We reject a self-centered life for a Christ-centered life. 
• A Christ-centered life allows us to know and do the will of God. 
• We dedicate our lives to the service of God. 
• We look not only to to our own interests, but also to the interest of others.
• When Christ is in us we follow God's will and work for his good pleasure.

The question is this: Can we sacrifice our moth and rust treasures, our earthly treasures, for eternal treasures found in the mind of Christ.