At the beginning of November, we have a retreat called Micah 6:8. Which reads: He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To at justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. The retreat was focused on this scripture and how with this mandate, we should go and live our lives according to it.
Before I get into more of what I learned from the retreat, I wanna take some time to just say how very blessed I am to be with my friends in this program. Some of my favorite parts of the weekend was eating meals with them. Another highlight was the first day we played football in a field. These friends also are trying to live by this mandate, but also remind me that it’s always good to take some time and to play.
Besides the mandate above, the thing that stuck out to me the most that our speaker, John Richmond said was that we should call people to have more than passion, but to have excellence and work ethic. That we shouldn’t fear failure but to prepare for it. To risk the possibility of failure. What is the cost of not going for it?
This really struck a chord with me. I feel like I am pretty passionate about a lot of things, but I don’t think that I’ve ever strived to be excellent at anything I’m passionate about. That included Jesus and Justice. John ‘s words really made me take a step back and really start to question myself and to tell myself that my passion is not enough, that I have to go above what I’ve been doing and strive for excellence. I’m still trying to figure out how to combine passion and excellence in my walk with Jesus and how passion and excellence looks in other things that I care about, but I feel like the Micah 6:8 retreat along with Fellows have given me the tools to do all this.
Going forward I want to be passionate and strive for excellence with Jesus. With the Micah 6:8 mandate and all the other things that I am passionate about.
Thankful for all these friends that I get to walk through these months with and that I get to watch them be passionate and strive for excellence as well.
-Dyl