She sends me an email.
Or walks up to me at a conference.
Maybe whispers it across the table at lunch.
It starts with something like, “I know I’m called to write or speak or cook or do spreadsheets but (and her voice gets lower here) what about the days when I’m just not feeling it?”
I nod. Because I know. Oh, how I know.
What I don’t know is how our culture has convinced us that any other skill is okay to practice but if it’s spiritual or art or both then you have to feel it every time.
The summer Olympics are still fresh on our minds. I’m picturing an interviewer asking an athlete, “How often do you practice?” And the reply being, “When I feel like it.”
We don’t ever hear that from athletes at that level.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. — Aristotle
What do you do when you don’t feel it? You do it anyway. Again and again and again.
It’s different if you don’t know what God wants you to do. But if you know that words, or food, or corporate work is your thing then you do it. Over and over again.
That’s stewardship–which really just means taking good care of what you’ve been given and making the most of it.
So if guilt has been chasing your around and yelling in your ear about how you can’t do something unless you really feel it then it’s time to kick guilt to the curb.
Do it.
Do it today.
Do it tomorrow.
Do it for the rest of your life.
And when you get Home to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant” you’ll feel what really matters most–the joy of your Master.
