In the beginning, God spoke the world into existence through the Logos. I enjoy imagining it like Lewis did in The Magician’s Nephew and having Aslan sing Narnia into being. The world was not singular. It was dynamic and growing. It was expansive. It was way bigger than Adam could ever fathom. This did not stop God from telling Adam to take dominion over every living thing. God built system into the world to govern the things outside of man’s control that man should seek to honor and not abuse. Man was meant to love this world into more loveliness.
Why do I bring all this up? Why do I love this? Long have I been troubled by the fact that I have bounced from sport to sport, job to job, idea to idea, and hobby to hobby. For a long time, I thought that I was looking for my calling, trying to find the thing that God placed me on this world for. I ran across something that talked about finding 5 hobbies to keep you active, creative, money, knowledge, and growing. 5 facets of a life to make one into a better person. I have done a shoddy job of most of these, being too focused on one or the other over the years for years, trying to specialize in life. I have done much in the area of knowledge since I’ve been married. As a kid, I focused on creative wanting to be a writer. As a teenager, I focused on active playing every sport I could. Then there was the time in my 20’s when I spent a lot of time learning about money. Finally, I have been in many friendships/discipleships that focused on growing. I have hit all of these areas in my life at one point or another. Yet, I have always felt like something was missing.
These hobbies/goals were not specific enough. They don’t get a person or a society enough direction to benefit those around them. These hobbies should not be so inwardly directed. They should be directed to a family and a community. To tweak these things slightly, I would say to develop hobbies to protect, provide, and add value to your community.
In order to protect one’s community, this means that one needs to be in shape and also dangerous. To be able to protect, one can’t stop at just being dangerous though. A dangerous person is also a danger to those he loves. He must also have the character and the knowledge to know when it is the time to fight. This would be to become a sheepdog and protecting your flock. One must be fast and strong, knowing how to hit, and most importantly, meek enough to know when it is appropriate to do so.
In order to provide for your family and community, it cannot be strictly monetarily. I would push it generationally. How do you provide for your grandchildren to come? For that, I would suggest not focusing only on the monetary side of the equation. Looking at the dollar today, I have little hope for it for another 100 years. Yet property has stood the test of time. War has taken property away, but that is where the first hobby come into play. Land is an asset that keeps on giving for generations to come. Not just housing though. What kind of product can reproduce itself on land forever? Agriculture would be another facet to this diamond providing the things for life for the generations to come. This is what I mean when I say to provide for your family. Live in such a way to set up the next generation to do it better than you did it. If the craziness of 2020 taught me anything, it is that you cannot depend on those around you to keep their head when things get out of the ordinary. If the government is in charge of the food supply, we are all in trouble. Own some dirt and learn to use it. Pass it along to your children. Help them to repeat the process.
Finally, to add value to your community. The first two categories will make a person valuable as an asset to a community. In this last one, I would want to push it further. Become a person that is respectable and keep leading when things go wrong. Learn wisdom. Learn philosophy. Learn religion. Know how the world works physically. Know people. All these things will add together to make you into a person that one will want to follow because you know the way to go. While the world is growing and changing, things are still staying the same. The sun still rises in the east and sets in the west. The tides follow the moon. Monarch Butterflies will migrate. The world follows the patterns that Christ has sang into the world. The music of the spheres still sings. A man should know the song in order to play the next note. This is a valuable thing. This will make one irreplaceable.
Start with where you are at. Look to where you should go. Learn all that you can. Pass it along to those who come after you. It is never too late to start to turn your ship around. It will only take humility.