The Book Tour // one extremely painful area of growth

Last night I finished up week four of the One Book A Week For A Year Tour. Once again this is a completely made up title that is more a descriptor of the task at hand rather than a real title. I must start with a confession, however. It feels like I may have already slightly failed since I finished this book on Sunday which to me is the first day of this week. So technically I didn’t complete a book last week. As a result of this highly unfortunate turn of events, and because I do not like to blow it, I’m changing the name of the tour to, A Solid Average of One Book A Week For A Year Which Means Sometimes The Weeks Will Overlap Tour.

Anyway, the book of the week was 200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One by Shawn Wood. I don’t want to get too much in to my review of the book yet, because I have an interview with the author coming soon and I’ll review the book there. Suffice it to say for the moment that this book had a lasting impact on me (in fact, it spoke directly into a situation that Kristen and I were dealing with last night. One of those moments where you’re struggling with a situation and you pick your book back up and its like the words were changed to help you out or something).

Taking one step back will help give some direction to this post.. Dan put a whole bunch of songs on to a CD for me in order to give me a little musical education and I’ve pretty much had the disc on repeat for about two or three weeks now because its just some great music. There’s a line in one of the songs that I can’t get out of my head that goes something like, “to play my little part in something big.” As I listened to this line again for the 400th time yesterday, it stood out a little clearer than it ever had before. This idea of playing your small part in a grand story was also fleshed out in 200 Pomegranates through the idea of doing the detailed work at a higher level that most people are going to be able to see, but you’re doing it anyway because it’s highly important (this will make more sense when the reveiw comes out or when you read the book).

Its nothing new. People have been writing books and articles and speaking on this since we realized that the story is not about us. But yesterday was one of those days where it just jumped out at me. One of those days you know where you have a little clearer picture of who the story is about and why it is so great that it is about Him and not you. But it invigorated me to live out my small part in the grand story. But this is a painful area of growth when you realize that you are going to have make some decisions that are not going to be easy to make about how you live (i.e. living for others rather than yourself). So that’s what I’m focus on this Monday morning (besides week three in the Shut Your Mouth, Brian, Its Monday Campaign where I will once again attempt to just keep my mouth shut today for the sake of other’s feelings and frustrations and my sanity), playing my little part in the “something big” that is God’s story. It involves changing the world today.

What are you doing?