Thursday, May 15, 2008

Life Lessons from Sailing

Sailing today with dad, David, and Marshall was great. I've decided that's it's one of the few really relaxing, wonderful, no stress ways to disconnect from the busyness of life and slowdown. Dad and David were great sailors and Marshall's a good teacher. One of the things he said as we were headed out this morning was that there's a lot you can learn from sailing and it's true. For example:

You can do everything possible to be ready for when the wind fills your sails, but you can't create the wind. Much of sailing can be simply waiting for a wind to pickup and you're completely out of control.

This parallels our lives in so many ways. Spiritually, we can only be ready for opportunities to share Christ with people, we can't create those opportunities. In careers, we can't create jobs, but we can be ready to handle the job we'd like to have when we have the opportunity. In education, we can only prepare for the school we'd liek to be a part of, but we can't create the university or create the automotatic "in". You can continue to cross apply this through lots of different aspects. The only thing we are really in control of is whether or not we're ready for the opportunities we're hoping for/anticipating.

There's a lot of other things you can learn from sailing - teamwork, bearable levels of stress, critical thinking, etc. In other words, if you get the chance...

...go sailing. :-)

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