place of nathan.

About a year ago, I got a Cingular 8125 phone/pda. I have enjoyed it a lot over the course of the past year, and it’s kept me from missing appointment after appointment. That scheduler has saved me more than once–although I occasionally still drop a ball here or there when I don’t pay enough attention to the pda.

When I was in college at Taylor in the fall of 1996, my next door neighbor Steve West bought a new kicking computer–Windows 95 and everything. One of our favorite things to do on the computer was play speed solitaire. We would see how quickly we could play the game. It was all about speed and high score.

Combine those two stories–my pda has solitaire on it, and over the course of the past year, I have played speed solitaire on it over and over. When I first got the phone, my goal was to score 5000 points. I did this rarely at first. Once I was able to score 6000 points, the 5000 mark wasn’t such a great goal any more. It just didn’t satisfy me any more. Now my goal was 6000, which I was rarely able to hit at first, too. Well, a couple weeks ago I scored 7000, and now 6000 isn’t very satisfying any more.

The problem is, it’s really hard to score 7000 in solitaire. You have to be good and get a lucky deal. The problem is this–it is a somewhat rare combination. I’ve only scored 7000 that one time. Since then, 6000 is a disappointment. 5000 doesn’t even feel like an accomplishment any more–it feels more like a failure.

What once felt like a great accomplishment now feels like failure.

I think very often in our walk with God, we run up against the same thing. Getting a taste of something better makes the things we used to do seem not so great any more–we want to experience more of God. We want to know God better, we want to serve God better.
Once we get ‘better’, the ‘old ways’ which were once satisfying are no longer satisfying. It’s not enough to simply keep on doing what we’ve always done–we need to do more.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do the ‘old ways’, but they should be stepping stones to getting to deeper, better things.

So the question of the day–what are you doing this week to advance your relationship with God?

Tags: Bible, devotions, God

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