Empowering

 

This Labor Day Week, we have taken time to name and notice our curiosity, what sends shivers down our spin with inspiration.  I’ve invited you to ponder where are you putting information to work and where does heart-soaked inspiration work in your life.  On the horizontal continuum of information to inspiration, we added a vertical line with equip at the top and empower at the bottom ~ forming four quadrants.  Yesterday, we spent time with the word, equip ~ when you take the knowledge of knowing what kind of wood works best to build something with a hammer, to using that tool to build a birdhouse step-by-step.  But equipping is only one way to let information and inspiration inform our lives.  At the bottom of that vertical line is the word, “empower”.  These are moments you move from following directions to testing out new ways of being.

For example, I can read a book about racism.  Information is good here.  I can know statistics related to how black and brown children are expelled more in school or the median level of income for non-white people in Sarasota.  This is a good start, but it might stay just stuck in my brain.  So maybe I want to let that feed and fuel my work toward equity and finding ways for all people live out who God crafts the individual to be/become.  We long for the experience of inspiration that moves us toward change.  Perhaps we need to let information and equipping play with each other.  I need to not just the how or who is impacted by poverty because of race, but listen to what the person struggling to make ends meet truly longs for ~ because it might not be a bigger bank account.  There is a constant dance between information and inspiration ~ how each will equip us for action.

At the opposite end of “equip” on the vertical line intersecting the continuum of inform to inspire is empower.  This is where you take the information on discrimination to a different direction and destination.  Maybe you are empowered to advocate for change in a new way/direction that doesn’t have years of research backing it up.  Or maybe you are empowered to be honest about your privilege.  Whereas equip was about application, empower is about transformation.  Equip asks what the next right step is, empower might move you into an unexplored place.  Empower asks the hard to answer question, “How should I do this and can I take this idea/notice/data to a new place?”  Note that inspire and empower together are important and can be used in good ways or not so good ways.  We see many people today inspiring and empowering people to fear or to see others as the problem or giving one piece of data that is than used to convince others that there is only one way to act.  Note that empowering will rarely look the same for everyone.  This connects back to Tuesday’s devotion ~ there is a diversity in what you are curious about, or inspired by, or feel equipped to do.  Some people can read a book or watch a lecture on an idea and out they go to do something.  Others spend time devouring book after book with no pause to breathe, digest, reflect, and response. 

What is empowering you to move in new ways? Where is the growth of information with inspiration in a different direction?  Where are you being equipped and how is that different than feeling empowered?  May these questions stay with you (for they might take a few days or weeks or months to live into), and may you find moments of quiet joy as the God who delights in the culmination and cooperation of information, inspiration, equipping and empowering in your life in these days.  Amen.