Posted by Mike O on: 08.07.2008 /
This fall at church, we’re going to be starting up a whole new series of small groups and I’ll be leading a men’s group called “Curveball.” Here’s the promo paragraph I wrote for it:
Phil 3:13-14a “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on …”
In a perfect world, there would be no curveballs - life would be under our control and go as expected. The problem is, it simply doesn’t work that way! Life throws a lot of curves, and the purpose of Curveball is to help men get past them. Fair or not, the curveballs of life are part of who we are today. And given that reality, Curveball will help men ask the important question, “So now what?” The short answer can be found in the first three words of Phil 3:14: I…PRESS…ON!
The thing that got me started on this topic was my job lay-off that I just went through this year. That was my most recent “curveball.” Of course, we’ll be taking a Christian approach, but it occurs to me that this topic is something that could be useful to people of any faith or non-faith.
The question that we’ll be working on isn’t “Why did this happen?” or “Why did GOD LET this happen?” (although that may come up!), but rather, “Given that this happened, how am I going to respond?”
The material I’m planning on using is two series by Andy Stanley called Destinations, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I’ve never heard them before, but I like Andy Stanley’s communication style and I think it will connect well. Here’s what they’re about:
We all have places we want to end up in life. Yet the paths we choose often lead us away from our intended destinations. One poor decision can send us down the wrong road, crushing our dreams, and wasting years of our lives. As time passes, we look back wondering how we got off course, and how we can recover from broken dreams. In this four-part series Destinations, Andy Stanley examines the disconnect between our dreams and the paths we take to reach them—that our direction, not our intentions, determines our destinations. Then, in the two-part series Boulevard of Broken Dreams, we learn how we should react when our dreams can’t ever come true.
It seems to be taking more an angle of “recovering from bad choices” than “dealing with difficult circumstances,” but I think it will apply well - especially the last two parts.
Another one I’m considering using is called “Life Interrupted,” by Louis Giglio.
A pink slip you didn’t see coming. A devastating test result. An untimely death. Sooner or later, interruptions come crashing in on us all, bringing with them a flood of questions about life and truth. Why did this happen? Where is God? How am I ever going to make it through these days? Yet, in the midst of confusion, God calls us to ask a different set of questions and embrace a new way of thinking, a path that leads us to understand His purposes in a seemingly unstable world.
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Comment by: Jason
1 08/10/08 8:49 AM | Comment Link |There is an eastern philosophy that we should be grateful for the bad things that happen to us as well as the good things. Each shapes us into the person that we are to become and we should therefore make the most from any situation. If you lose your job you have an opportunity to learn new skills or re-apply old ones in a new way.
Although I’ve never had anything that I would consider to be truly terrible happen to me I think that this could be applied to even the worst situations. If someone suffers from a crippling illness or accident then they can either make the best of it or succumb to despair. I look upon Christopher Reeve as the epitome of how to make the best of things.
Of course I don’t see God’s hand in anything bad or anything good so I could hardly blame God for the bad things nor beseech him for aid in coping with them. Instead I see it as a state of mind. How can I make the best of this? What can I learn from this? How can I stop myself from making this situation worse?
My company deals with mortgage arrears counselling. We send people out on behalf of lenders to interview people who have fallen into arrears on their mortgages. We want to know why they have fallen into debt and how they are going to repay what they owe. Often the initial cause of the arrears are beyond the debtor’s control. They may have suffered a bereavement or lost their job through illness or redundancy.
Very often though the people in the worst state are those who ignored the letter from the bank or preferred to keep spending beyond their means, mounting credit on top of credit with no way to repay it. the people who ignore the problem suffer more. Those who face up to it and try to make the best of what they have generally do better. A bank is more understanding when a person has a plan to repay a debt or has taken steps to minimise further arrears. It is in their interests to keep people in their homes and repaying their loans after all.
Comment by: Jason
2 08/10/08 9:06 AM | Comment Link |I want to add that Christopher Reeve may not have been happy about the accident that crippled him and shortened his life but he certainly made the very best of his situation. The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation has certainly done an incredible amount of good both in seeking a cure for spinal injury and providing practical help and advice for those injured.
The foundation isn’t alone of course. I choose to support the Anthony Nolan Trust, a charity providing support for leukaemia and providing a matching service for bone marrow donors and patients. The charity came about following the illness and subsequent death of Anthony Nolan, a child who suffered from leukaemia. How’s that for taking a bad situation and making something positive out of it? I have trouble imagining anything worse for a parent than the suffering and death of their child. To turn that around to help others is a great example to us all.