Same old

Genesis 8:8 He also released a dove to see if the water had receded and it could find dry ground… 10 After waiting another seven days, Noah released the dove again…  12 He waited another seven days and then released the dove again. This time it did not come back.

This is the time of year when, if they’re not taking the cynical resolutions-are-a-waste-of-time line, people start thinking about change.  I know I always feel like I should start doing something different at the start of the year.  This comes from the assumption that doing a new thing will give new results.  It’s an attractive premise.  Einstein may or may not have said (but someone did) that ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results’.

But… that assumes I was doing the wrong thing in the first place.  Noah here did the same thing three times and got a different result each time.  He kept doing the same thing but his circumstances had changed, so he got different results.

Sometimes the right thing to do is keep on doing the same old thing, even if conventional wisdom (or old clichés) suggest otherwise. Just like Simon Peter:

Luke 5:5 “Master,” Simon replied, “we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.”

I guess the challenge is knowing when I’m stubbornly and uncreatively banging my head against a brick wall, and when I should persist in doing the right thing until the right time comes.

Lord give me the good sense to know the difference.