First Baptist Church of Herndon

DING!

Linda Soller | Mar 27, 2017

Not long ago I attended a conference related to my full-time job. It was an annual conference and one I look forward to each year. I work in human resources and, as you can imagine, it can be stressful. As it happened, the day after the conference I was scheduled to attend a symposium on legal issues. This was great because I could focus my conference time on training, morale building, new benefits, anything but regulations. Wow, what a relief! The keynote speakers were there to inspire and encourage us. Some of my workshops had me laughing and learning at the same time, crazy I know! I came home with lots of notes to share with my team. Unfortunately, I found it hard to do the speakers justice. I realized that what they said was valuable, but the true value was how it made me feel about myself and my work. Those two things are not easy to describe.

Wonder why we humans need to be revived so often? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just have a trick where we could make ourselves feel renewed, reawakened, or inspired without having to have others involved? Let’s face it, not everyone gets a chance to attend a conference geared toward prodding its participants to rise above their daily challenges. One speaker, Avish Parashar, spoke to our ability to respond when “Ding Happens.” Ding is when life happens and like a bell going “DING” you suddenly must deal with a new reality. An unexpected death, a sudden loss of a job, an act of nature that leaves you feeling lost, these are all “ding” moments.  His solution proposed positive attitudes reinforced by creativity and innovation. I particularly liked his statement that we “can do something new, or we can do something old in a new way!” Think about it.

As Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday draw near many of us seem to find time to come to church. Like a bell that goes “ding” and you say, “I can get there this week.” Faith, much like my conference, offers support and encouragement. It strengthens us to deal with the challenges of life. Faith inspires and prods us to be better Christians, and better human beings. What will it take for you to respond when that bell goes “ding”? If you can muster your resources to go to church for two Sundays, why not more? Think about it, DING!

Make this a great week!  :o)  Linda

I encourage you to check out Avish Parashar via Ted Talks on YouTube.