Lessons from JH Ranch - Part 3 — The Edwards Family

Another famous quote from the Ranch is:

A life not evaluated is not worth living.

I was curious where this came from and found that is was actually said by the famous Greek philosopher Socrates. Unfortunately for him, it was said at his trial right before he was put to death after being accused of trying to inspire youth to think for themselves.

Nevertheless, it does have great application for us - particularly in the culture that we live in now. We have so many options for keeping ourselves occupied with technology etc… that it is very easy to go for long stretches of time without any real reflection into our lives.

So, what are the consequences of “a life not evaluated?” We covered one of them a couple of weeks ago when we talked about “drift.” We can easily drift off course if we don’t spend some time reflecting on where we are and where we are heading.

Another way that we can be impacted is to lack in spiritual maturity as is addressed in the verses below:

1 Corinthians 3:2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready,

Reflection time helps us move from milk (immaturity) to solid food (maturity.) It exposes areas of our lives where immaturity and sin might be hiding. These things are easy to mask if we never unplug and have quiet times of reflection.

Hebrews 5:14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Maturity is built in many ways but one of those is by facing the issues that we need to deal with and taking them head on - kind of like that 109 mile bike ride that Catherine is about to embark on in the picture above. God sometimes uses journeys like that to prepare us for even greater journeys with higher stakes.

All of us have had some great refection time up at the cross at JH. Find a place this week where you can quietly reflect on your life and see what God has for you right now. Dine on on “solid food” with him!

Stay hungry,

Big E