New policy
Yesterday morning when I was at church service, singing, God started talking to me about living an integrated life. In particular, He pointed out the similarity between the words "integrated" and "integrity".
Now, if you are fascinated by words & language like I am (and yes, I know I'm such a nerd *grin*), you'll notice they are enough alike to have possibly come from the same root. So when I got back home I checked, and sure enough, both words are from the Latin integer, which means "complete" or "whole".
In essence what God was trying to say is that integrity is nothing more than living an integrated life, ie. every area of life -- Christian ministry, work, friends, family, leisure -- is to be treated the same.
And what would you mean by treating everything the same, you ask. It simply means upholding the same standards and being the same person always no matter where I'm are and what situation I'm in.
But of course I'm the same person, you say. For a long time, though, I have been troubled because sometimes it feels like I have double standards. Perhaps it's partly because I'm more passionate about certain things compared to others. (I'm sure most people will agree that it's easy to be passionate about leisure activities as opposed to... say... work! :P) This however should not be an excuse; I want to faithfully carry out that which has been entrusted to me -- no matter whether I feel passionately about it or not.
Yesterday, as God talked to me about living an integrated life, I saw in my mind's eye the picture of a person standing straight and tall everywhere he goes. Because he lives an integrated life, wherever he goes he stands out as a man above reproach; he is different from the people around him. And he carries the mantle of God's presence and God's light with him everywhere he goes, because of the way he lives.
I want to live an integrated life. Blogging, to a certain extent, interferes with this. It's distracting, and often I find myself either blogging, reading others' blogs, or thinking about what to write, when I should be spending my time doing other things and carrying out other responsibilities.
This year looks to be a year of putting things in their proper places and getting my life right with God in every area. Part of this requires me to cut down on my writing here, and reduce or halt my participation on all your blogs, so it's a bit as if I'm withdrawing from the blogging community -- although I hope to still post at least once a week if not more, which means I'm not doing a disappearing act. I have no idea if I have enough self-control to reduce my blogging by that much (although I've never blogged daily anyway, if you've noticed) -- but I can try.
Part of me does worry that I'll lose readers. After one-and-a-half years I've somehow managed to gain many regular readers and build relationships with many of you. Part of me is worrying that if I do this, if I take a step back, it's like throwing all that away; that my blog will sink into obscurity, and if I ever do come back to blogging more frequently, I'll have to start from scratch all over again. Like as if it's all about ME. So perhaps it'll be good to take a step back anyway. Because it should never be about me.