Devotion: Open Communication
Please take the time to read Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Calling all Swifties…this one’s for you! As well as for those who, like me, are fascinated with Taylor Swift’s business acumen, growing empire, measurable impact on the global economy and the Easter eggs she hides for those who know where to look and what to look for. And if you are annoyed by her or jealous of her, that’s ok too. Keep reading.
Earlier this month T. Swift appeared on the New Heights Podcast with her boyfriend (and now fiancée) Travis Kelce and his brother, Jason. They all talked for over two hours and covered a lot of ground. Think parents’ health struggles, otters, orange iconography, sourdough bread, and an upcoming album.
And in the middle of all of that, Taylor dropped this nugget… she is “never going to be great at catching a ball” but that’s ok because it’s not “part of my metrics for my self-worth.”
Whoa, what? In one breath, she was able to take someone else’s metric for them self, acknowledge it, set it down and move on without discounting that person or herself. That’s some T. Swift magic right there.
And with that, the gust of wind you felt was Taylor impacting the weather system as people across the country reached for laptops, phones, scraps of paper, or even notecards to write that down that tidbit of free therapy.
(There’s a song lyric in there somewhere. Sing about it, Taylor!)
So how does she measure her self worth? How should you measure yours? How should I measure mine?
I don’t how Taylor measures her self-worth – and it doesn’t matter because her metrics and standards don’t have to be mine or yours.
And if you have a set of metrics regarding your self-worth that both you and God feel good about, then congratulations, you are apparently in good company with T. Swift.
However, if you don’t and struggle with how to judge yourself and others in a healthy manner, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians gives us a good place to start: “Be angry but do not sin. Do not make room for the devil. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
Let’s face it, this is hard. What you communicate to others and maybe, more importantly, what you communicate to yourself can be difficult to manage. What words come out of your mouth? Show up in a social media post? Are sent in an email? Play on a loop in your head? What do you tell yourself about you – over and over and over again? What is your demeanor? Your outlook on life? What do your actions say?
Words and behaviors are ingredients. The right combination and they are nourishing, nurturing, delicious. But the wrong combination and they are repugnant, repulsive, distasteful.
Do you build up? Are you kind? Tenderhearted? Forgiving? To others? To yourself? Do you measure up? Do you want to be any of this?
We all need to figure out what’s on the recipe card for each of us and hold ourselves to those measurements and metrics. Maybe, like Pastor Sarah, you don’t ‘kitchen’. And like Taylor Swift you don’t catch a football. It doesn’t matter.
What does matter though? Perhaps how well we follow what Paul says – and not society, not someone on social media, not our neighbors, not our friends, not our co-workers and not even Taylor Swift – could be a metric for determining our individual self-worth.
I’m making it one of my metrics. And creating friendship bracelets. The world needs more friendship bracelets!
Good, Gracious and Generous God,
You have told us who we are to be and given us metrics to measure ourselves against, yet we often hold ourselves to society or other people’s standards. Help us to follow our own recipe cards and to use Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as a metric for determining our own self-worth.
Amen
Written by Dacia Kruse
Dacia lives in Lincoln. She is a lobbyist and mediator through The Mediation Center where she primarily works with parents who are separating and trying to figure out how to co-parent their kids.
She has been a member of Sheridan since the late 1990’s and is new to the Sheridan Church Council. She regularly attends Theology Roundtable and serves on a Saturday evening hospitality team, the Sunday morning Welcome Center team and as a Wedding Coordinator. In her free time, she likes to read, travel, shop and decorate her house.