Life Is Bigger Than You Think Series

"Life is Bigger Than You Think

Series: REBOOT: Fresh Start for a New Year Brad Bailey – January 8, 2023

Intro

My added my welcome into the new year.

As this new year has approached…I have had the sense that there is a unique need for a fresh start this year…and a unique opportunity for it.

Is sense many of us could use something akin to a rebooting a computer.

Have you ever had a computer slow down… when it’s not operating the way your use to? Sometimes it’s hard to know why… and when there is no one clear problem… the best advice is to reboot the computer… reboot the system. There may be some changes that have occurred…that have bogged down how the system is operating. There may be files that got moved.

There may be updates that haven’t been made. The system needs to reset itself.

Rebooting a system can clear some process that got stuck… it can restore some connections that had changed.

In a similar way, when life brings changes, some of us may find that we are not functioning

with all the vitality we once did.

With every change in life… our inner operating system can bog down.

Patterns have changed. It’s been hard to keep up with updates.

And it’s important to realize…

we’ve all had a lot of changes in life.

There is the sheer rate of change that has come in the recent years.

As technology has developed…it has accelerated changes…changes in multiple areas of life. In the past… there had been one major technological advance that brought a major change into the world …. about every hundred years… like the Gutenberg printing press. Now we are experiencing multiple Gutenberg changes all at the same time.

The pace of change in technology is exponential… with multiple advances …growing from one another…in a compounding dynamic.

Computing power and technological advances have been doubling every two years….and most recently…every 18 months. That is an exponential rate of progress. [1]

• It’s estimated that 90% of the world’s data was collected in the last two years.

• There are 1.35 million tech startups in the world.

And these changes … bring massive change to every sphere of life… changing our economic systems, the nature of jobs, our life styles and life patterns, and our social dynamics.

The point is that we have been amidst a massive rate of change in life… a rate of change that is faster than we can simply process.

It is undeniable that things aren’t what they were this time last year and we will be saying the same thing next year."

"Even though changes themselves come quickly, our ability to adapt to change is a process… and sometimes a lengthy one.

Whenever we experience change, whether a positive change like a getting a better job or a negative one like the death of a loved one or even a neutral one like moving a phone from one side of your desk to the other.

This process takes longer and is more intense for bigger changes, but all change requires a process.

I read of research that says if you move a phone from one side of your desk to the other, it can take six months before you always reach for the right part of your desk when the phone rings. We might need six months of transition for something as minor as reorganizing a desk. [2]

An adding to the change we experience… came a pandemic….which brought more change than anyone can grasp…. a breadth of change we are still affected by.

Change in our patterns…

Change in our aspirations (school, jobs, economic, etc)

Change in our relational connections – along with those who lost friends or family …people moved … divisions arose. [3]

Some groups of people have been affected much more than others. Faced with extended school and university closures young people have been left vulnerable to social isolation and disconnectedness which can fuel feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and loneliness and lead to affective and behavioral problems. [4]

I understand it can be a little uncomfortable to talk about struggles with mental health… anxiety and depression … but it is crucial that we do.

Because …. God cares… he cares about your state of mind and soul and mine. And he cares about the state of those in your life.

And of course many people have identified some positive changes in their lives… but they are still changes. [5]

So much change can affect our inner operational system.

In the same way that on a computer we may have moved or deleted some files…and the operating system is slowed trying to find them.

Aspirations may have dimmed. Expectations may elude us. Connections may have changed. Some may sense that they aren’t as living as fully as they had… still doing things… but not with the vitality you’ve known in the past… not as fully engaged.