A few years ago I was overseas for work when, one day, I moved in a way my body obviously didn’t appreciate, and I did something to my back. It didn’t seem like a big deal, just a bit of a twinge, and I was due to start travelling home the next day, so I just ignored the pain, packed and went to bed.
It’s a phrase that popped into my head the other day, my brain conjuring up the reworked version of the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III, “Now is the winter of our discontent…”
I was reflecting on the way that the saturation of our lives with wifi connectivity brings consumerism into our homes in a variety of direct and indirect ways – and, by extension, can also bring the discontent that often attends consumerism.
In October of 1962, the world stood on the brink. The unfolding events of the Cuban missile crisis seemed to be driving the world unstoppably towards unthinkable ends. Yet a peaceful resolution was found, and disaster averted.
How?
We can only be deliberate about the way we live to the extent that we are deliberate about the way we lead ourselves – including the way we manage our emotions.
A lot of things that don’t matter get said on twitter. A while back, though, I read something that changed my relationships for the better.
Tim Keller leads a church of over 5,000 people in New York City, a place with its fair share of egos, and perhaps not a culture that screams selflessness. In mid-2014, he tweeted the following, which was then retweeted more than 1000 times! Clearly, there was something that resonated in these words:
