Try Something New

Natalie inspired me to set a short-term goal last year.  I’m happy to say I was able to achieve the goal!  It’s something that I haven’t done in quite a while.  Memorization!  At first, I was not sure I would be able to do it.  But, isn’t that what goal-setting is all about?  It’s about challenging yourself to do something that you want to do and figuring out how to get it done!

So, how did Natalie inspire me?  I have never even met Natalie.  She is my friend’s 11-year-old granddaughter.  Natalie memorizes Bible verses as part of her homework at her Christian school.  My friend frequently tells me the verses Natalie has memorized.  I’m always so impressed.  Then, last Fall, my friend told me that Natalie memorized Isaiah 53:1-7.  Wow!  Seven verses!  Memorizing a single verse is one thing, but she memorized seven verses!  I wondered if I could do it, too.  I told my friend I wanted to try it.  If Natalie could do it, maybe I could do it, too!

My friend said she would touch base with me before Thanksgiving to hear me recite the verses.  OK, I thought.  I have six weeks to memorize the verses.  After memorizing the first two verses, I made a plan to memorize a verse a week until I had memorized all seven verses.  Here they are, from memory:

Isaiah 53:1-7:

1- Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2- He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.  He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3- He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.  Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

4- Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

5- But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.  The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

6- We all, like sheep, have gone astray; each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7- He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.  He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

(The prophet Isaiah wrote those words almost seven hundred years before Christ the Messiah was born.)

Thanks to Natalie and her dedication to memorization, I discovered, or re-discovered, that I love to memorize.  When I was a kid, probably Natalie’s age, I memorized the names of the books of the Old Testament.  It was a song that my sisters and I learned in Sunday School.  I still know it today, and I think of it often when I read the Old Testament.  I have no trouble finding the books and the verses.

Try something new!  Challenge yourself.  Another friend of mine discovered an amazing art talent that she did not know she had.  She began coloring the intricate designs in coloring books for adults, and she found a hidden creativity in herself.  She creates unique paintings using parts of the coloring books and adding her own designs inspired by other things, such as photographs of family and pets.  She has done beautiful paintings that take my breath away!  She even won an art contest last year!

Use your imagination.  Go through the goal-setting exercise I mapped out in my blogpost, “A New Year Goal Strategy,” and add one more goal… “I will try something new this year.  I don’t know what it is yet, but I will keep my eyes and ears open, and I will look for inspiration from those around me.”

My number one goal still is to finish a book, and I am continuing to work on all three book projects that I have in process.  I am strategizing to make sure I complete at least one of the books by the end of 2017!

Let’s keep moving forward in our goal journeys together.  Stay inspired, stay focused, and seek God’s guidance on a daily basis throughout 2017.

Devotion

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.  Psalm 32:8

Prayer:

      

Lord, thank you for inspiring us with verses from the Bible and through our daily walk with you.  We know that you care about us and love us, and that you want a close relationship with us.  We seek your guidance in our goal-setting journeys.  I pray that you would lead us to try new things that you have in store for us to do.  Help us to discover the talents and gifts you have given us!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

© 2017 Linda Lijewski