day 1305: Hopscotch

"I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry."

One of my favorite bloggers, Seth Godin, had this to say recently about the pace of how we we now work:

"We skip reading the whole thing, because it's easier to jump to what we assume the writer meant.
We skip engaging with customers and stakeholders because it's quicker to assert we know what they want.
We skip doing the math, examining the footnotes, recreating the experiment, because it might not turn out the way we need it to.
We better hurry, because the firstest, loudest, angriest opinion might sway the crowd."

Guilty as charged?  Sure, we all are, and we need to know the same about our consumers, customers and employees.  Internally, we spend time and energy on things that demand deep-thinking and reading the fine print for success to happen and then we are frustrated when our people say, "I didn't know".  This is not going to get better. With a 140 character, Snapchat, Instagram world, we are only experiencing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to attention-span deficit and hopscotching through work and life.  What to do?  We must adapt without losing the ability to place emphasis where attention must be held.  It can be done and those who master this will win the day.  Consider the power of visuals, sounds and stories that make one think and ask follow up questions.  If you have read this far...the answer lies somewhere there.

Our God is not a hopscotch God, thankfully.  He doesn't cut a corner or abbreviate His love and patience for us, but He also in return doesn't let us off the hook with how we go about developing a real and vibrant relationship with Him. There isn't a 140 character way to deepen a relationship.  Just like when we need to get real we put down the texts and we look up and into a face of someone who matters, the same can be said about our relationship with Christ. We need to get real for Him to be real.  God's Word, prayer, fellowship with other believers and time in church are the touchstones that we can't skip over.  If you are feeling like a few "things" have been skipped and hopped over that have left you unsettled at work or home, consider that it might be that you are skipping over the critical and most important and it is time to go back to the basics that will always provide comfort, peace and direction.

Reference: Psalm 40:1 (New Living Translation)