Here's Lesson One

I have been stuck on this idea of 'It's not how you start, it's how you finish" for a while now. I know I posted about this last week already but this idea seems to be hitting me over and over again. This happens to me from time to time: where a thought or a life-lesson comes at me repeatedly over a short period of time.

Years ago, I was sitting around a campfire, camping somewhere along the Oregon Coast with about a dozen other people and we were just talking about life and faith and stuff. I don't remember much of that camping trip, let alone the campfire, but the one thing I remember is an off-the-cuff comment made by someone.

He said, that it seems often, that God teaches us a lesson, He says, "Here's lesson one. Okay, you got that? Then let's move on to lesson one. Have you learned it yet? Great, then here's lesson one. We good? Awesome...lesson one!" That is so often the way God works in my life. It seems like He teaches me the same things over and over again.

What I've come to realize is that this probably says more about me than it does about God. It probably has more to do with my stubbornness than it does with God's failure to move along. It is probably more to do with my unwillingness to grasp what God is teaching me than with God's penchant for repetition.

If I would boil it all down, I could probably look back on my life and all the life-issues I face would really be rooted in a couple of areas where God continues to show me 'lesson one.'

Maybe one day, I'll graduate to lesson two (mind you, lesson two entails a lot of review from lesson one!).