Clear Choice

How do you know when you should keep trying and when you should give up?

If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. - Mark 6:11

In today's Gospel, Jesus makes the decision easy.  If you are accepted, stay; if you are rejected, leave.

Throughout my personal and business life, that choice was not always so clear.  I have chosen to stay when rejected and leave when accepted, so perhaps I had my signals crossed, or maybe just didn't see the writing on the wall.

So, when the choices aren't black and white, how do we know what the right course of action is?

For the disciples, the goal was to spread the word.  If they couldn't do it in one place, they moved on to the next.

It wasn't about the individual successes and failures, but the net gain in the end.

When we look at our lives that way, we can write off a lot of failures and focus instead on the successes, giving us a much better overall picture of our accomplishments.  Is that a bad thing?

I don't think so, but it sure isn't easy, is it?

We tend to remind ourselves of the mistakes and be haunted by "What-if" and "If Only".

Maybe we should take Jesus' advice and shake off the dust and move on.  In the end, none of the things we choose to regret matter.

The mark we make and how we perceive it are both up to us.  So, shake it off and get going.  It's all good.

More to come...