What Makes Something Meaningful?

Let's cut to the chase. We want something honest.

Now that I answered my question, allow me to elaborate.

The most meaningful, and I would argue life changing, conversations I have taken in were not planned, organized, programized (new word), or taken from an outline in a book about having meaningful conversations. They snuck up on me as if I were an unsuspecting bird bathing under the supervision of some tiger like tabby cat.

These sorts of encounters only started to happen when I learned to be honest, and not in the generic I am human and have problems sense. I used to do that to make myself approachable and likable, and sometimes even 'spiritual', as if my generic issues made me qualified to understand grace. Until I learned to shame myself in front of someone and put myself in the position where they could justifiably wonder why they would want to talk to me, I didn't encounter much in the way of this sort of life changing heart exchange.

These sorts of encounters never happened in Bible studies. I'm not sure this was the fault of the Bible, or God, because most of my meaningful moments came back to Him and His thoughts. I think it has something more to do with what people do when they get in situations like that. You're showing up to this thing where you sit with a bunch of people you somewhat know with the intent of finding some deep spiritual truth that no one in the history of the world has discovered before in the course of about 30 minutes. What usually ends up happening is that someone asks generic questions that the verse just read obviously answers. If not that, then things head off on the most impractical yet divisive theological issues you can think of. I hope to never attend another Bible study again. On the other hand I very much hope to explore life through the thoughts of God, within deep relationships, many more times.

These sorts of encounters didn't always have a singular point. They sort of meandered around whatever God forsaking trouble I, or my co-explorer had got into, asking the whys and hows and how to get back to innocence. I don't apologize to say that not everything in life has to be a coherent, singular, point. Record your focused conversation sometime and see just how thesis like it really is. This doesn't scare me as much as it used to. I don't think this means that life isn't coherent, I think it just means that maybe the unifying theme is something deeper and more relational than a few tidy points. Maybe that's why we can't wait for the Bible study to get over so we can play cards and laugh together.