“In fact, I lost contact with most of the people I knew in
college…The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different
from the strutting graduate who left campus that day headed for New York City,
ready to offer the world his talent.”
How many
of us have been guilty of the same thing? We promise to stay in touch with
people we think we should at the time. But, life’s circumstances and the
demands of job, home, school, etc. drive a wedge between our good intentions
and the fulfilling of our promises.
Why is
this so important?
Keeping promises eliminates guilt. We
all have done this. Whenever you think of a person, you know you need to
communicate with them, but you put it off. Guilt has a strange way of operating
off of compound interest: guilt ignored produces more guilt. We find out that
when we fail to stay in touch, good memories are replaced with a burdened
conscience that feels like a backpack full of rocks.
Staying in touch validates relationships.
Nothing is more important in the world than people. Think about what Christ
died for: not programs, but people. Not money, but people. Not power, prowess
or prestige, but people. When we keep our word and stay in touch with people,
it validates those relationships. There are wonderful blessings and benefits
that accrue both ways between friends when relationships are tended to!
Staying in contact keeps priorities
straight. Mitch reveals in his own life that the demands of chasing his
dreams, and the demands of deadline-oriented career made him forget some very
important people in his life. Once we are caught up in the web of “the tyranny
of the urgent,” we are spun into a cocoon
of our own making that becomes a straightjacket binding us to a selfish
existence. We forget about others, and our priorities in view of others and
eternity gets all messed up.
Have we
followed up on our own promises of staying in touch?
In Christian love, Curtis
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