I’ve been opening my heart and mind more and more to learn from others, to embrace new ideas, and to question more. I want to get outside of my own experience and inhabit the stories of others to gain understanding and growth. I want to grow in love and wisdom. I want to stay fresh and vibrant instead of stale and stagnant.
But it’s scary sometimes.
So many of us don’t want to listen to other points of view, and we don’t know what it might mean for our identity to change our positions or our ideas on various issues. We’ve maybe attached too much to certain ways of thinking on anything from parenting to nutrition to politics. Or maybe how we’re thinking now is exactly right and the best representation of biblical truth. That could be. But what if we were all teachable and wisdom-seeking together as a posture of humility?
What if I allowed the possibility of changing my mind? What if you did?
(I’m amazed at how resistant I am to new theories of pedagogy as one small example or whenever someone tells me something about shame. I like to be the unchanging expert!)
Instead of always reacting, I’m listening more. I’m learning. This kind of posture matters as we age. I’ve learned that we have two choices as we grow into our late forties, fifties, sixties and beyond: We can stay teachable, or we can calcify.
We can harden. We can stop growing.
I want to say pliable, malleable, and teachable in God’s hand. He might send someone into my life with a different point of view in order to help me grow. He might have me grapple with a difficult sermon to help me grow. I might ask Jesus, “How are you teaching me here? How is this shaping my character more to be like You? Is there something I need to change here?”