Shake it up!

Proverbs 9 Verse 6:

Leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the way of insight.

Leave your simple ways and you will live…

As I read through Proverbs 9 today, I struggled to choose a verse to “live” and write about. Then after a third read, I settled in on verse 6. I think that this verse resonated with me today because of my infatuation with the series Westworld, on HBO. If you have never seen Westworld, it is essentially, a SCFI, based in the old west that tackles the topic of “free will”.

It the series, robots, that look, act, talk and bleed identical to humans, are programmed to be the characters that you would expect to see if you were to go back to the gun-slinging days of the old west. These robots are then placed in an amusement park type setting where humans can go and live out their gun-slinging, philandering fantasies.

What made Westworld so fascinating, is that as the series evolved, some of the robots began to realize that they were not human. As they begin to “wake up” they realize that they had been given a simple set of algorithms that dictated their every function. They had no “free will”. Through their programming, they lived life through the algorithm they had been given, seldom leaving the patterns to which they were comfortable, THEIR SIMPLE WAYS.

Are we so different? Leave your simple ways and you will live…  When was the last time you “shook” things up? Went to a new restaurant, tried a new food, made new friends with people of different viewpoints, took a different route to or from work, made out with your spouse in a strange, exciting place or learned something new? As humans, it seems that many of us get stuck in the same old patterns. Many of these patterns simply no longer serve our greater good but we are stuck living them because it is the story that we know, the story we’ve created for ourselves.

I’m too_________________.

I’m not _______________________ enough.

I used to be ______________________ but now I’m just ____________________.

I’m stuck because of __________________________.

I can’t because of _________________________.

Whatever the story is, if you believe it with enough conviction, you will program that story to be your truth, your pattern, your algorithm.

Maybe “living” this verse is no more complicated than understanding that to truly live, God wants us to mix things up a bit. Seek insight, seek wisdom, seek understanding and then simply “walk” (take action) in the direction(s) that we discover, never again to be complacently stuck in our patterns.

The interesting part about “free will” is that God has given us the POWER of choice. IT is up to US to choose. God can fill our heads with ideas and  plant all the seeds that he wants in regards to who we could become or who we could help but unless we make the CHOICE to take action and leave the programs (our story) that we have created behind , we will never truly “live” the life that we were created to live.

What pattern are you going to shake up today?

Have a great day…

Kevin