by Kathy Sinclair BWAA
I think it would be fair to say we are living through a pretty trying season. Each of us has a story to share about Covid and its impact on our own life. Some of those stories are profound – the loss of a loved one, or they are stories of disappointment – that cancelled holiday that had been looked forward to for so long…… Then, just as we began to ease out of Covid finally, a serious war erupted. It seems everywhere we look in the world there is trouble and strife. We shouldn’t underestimate the impact these troubled times have on us.
I don’t know about you, but to be painfully honest, I’ve noticed I’ve become a bit less tolerant than I normally am. Like my rather petty and grumpy attitude, when my neighbour’s teenage son had parked across our driveway (again!) so that I couldn’t get my car out of my house to go to work without going and knocking at their door. I pasted on a false smile, which I’m sure didn’t fool anyone. I was thinking to myself how inconsiderate the boy was and how lacking in awareness of other people’s needs – rant, rant, rant!
When I finally got out of the driveway, huffing and puffing to myself, an uncomfortable thought popped into my head. On reflection, I’m sure it had its roots in an evening course I have been taking this year on the ancient spiritual practices of silence, solitude and other difficult but extremely beneficial practices of the Christian faith!
The thought was, “what is provoking that response?”. Ouch! I can’t answer why the lad behaves like he does, but I can ask myself“why is his behaviour provoking me?” and I can practice lingering in that space. It was uncomfortable to linger with that question initially because my own pettiness bobbed up in front of me and made me feel churlish and to be painfully honest (again) frankly a bit silly! However, as I lingered there in my discomfort, I was able to sense the invitation that God never seems to fail to make to us when we learn to linger in His presence. Learning to linger with our responses and reactions, is just the sort of space the Spirit of the Living God seems to delight to move in. For myself as I lingered with why I had felt so irritated, I experienced a softening towards the young lad, remembering my own struggles during the teenage years and how I provoked people too!
As we learn to linger, asking questions about our own behaviour and seeking the divine invitation towards change, we discover things about ourselves, God and other people. Sometimes what provokes us in someone else, is something we don’t like in ourselves, but if we don’t learn to linger, especially in these very trying times, we miss God’s invitation to change and grow.
Kathy Sinclair is the BWAA Church Relationship Manager in Western Australia. Kathy joined Baptist World Aid in January 2019. She comes to the role having spent 11-years on staff at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Western Australia, as the Children and Families Pastor. In more recent years, she also held responsibility for overseeing the church’s mission ministry. Kathy has been a speaker for Christian Women Communicating Internationally (CWCI) for several years, where she enjoys the privilege of travelling around Western Australia to teach God’s word. She enjoys visiting church communities to share about the work of Baptist World Aid and how individuals and congregations can respond effectively to God’s heart for the poor and needy. Kathy is married to Mark and has two children and a daughter-in-law.
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