Turning Nouns into Verbs

"Compassion, wonder, curiosity, and energy are nouns. It's our job to turn them into verbs."--Mark Batterson

I been thinking I might need a job. My kids are quickly growing up and I have more time on my hands than I ever imagined. What in the world am I to do with myself?  I guess everyone thinks about what they need to be doing when a new year begins. It is January and 10 degrees outside but since I am in middle of life I know that before I turn around, I'll see a daffodil blooming in Susan's yard across the street.  

I live in eternity. For someone like me who has received the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, that eternal reality takes the concept of my life work into a different realm than just having a job. The truth is that I am also living in time. God put me in this time and this place for a purpose--to give Him glory. I was created for that purpose both now and forever.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning... Gen. 1:31

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  Ecc. 3:11

One of the maxims that I have kept as a guiding principle in my life is that God is more interested in who who am than what I do. I still believe there is truth to the principle but the older I get, and have humbly accepted that I don't have to work to please God in order to have his favor, the more I realize that I want to make my faith work. I would say I am convicted that true faith works or it isn't faith at all. The Bible says:

For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.  Jam. 2:26

When I saw the "tweet" quoted above on another blog, the words compassion, wonder, curiosity, and energy caught my attention.  They are powerful words and they are all things that I possess. What was it about the tweeter's thought that pricked at my heart?


Compassion:   sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it
Wonder:   a cause of astonishment or admiration
Curiosity:   desire to know
Energy:  a fundamental entity of nature that is transferred between parts of a system in the production of physical change with the system and usually regarded as the capacity for doing work
              
What good is it to have a heart of compassion but not offer encouragement, comfort, or love?  The world is full of wonders but do I notice them, acknowledge them to their wonderful Creator? Do I thank him for them? What good is curiosity if the desire to know is never accompanied with an effort to find the interests stirred within? And energy, with its capacity, its potential, why let energy wait when it could be expended on things that make compassion, wonder, and curiosity become active, essentially, if not grammatically, verbs. 

Could that be my job description this year? Could I work at making these nouns into verbs?  

The Apostle Paul made a statement to the early Christians that a friend sent to me this morning as an encouragement:

Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.  I Thess. 5:24

So if God calls me to show compassion, experience His wonder, makes me curious, and gives me the breath to move from the chair to join Him at work in the world then it will come to pass. Bring it on my Faithful Friend.

I think I have a job.