work – sethlewis.ie

The Skill That Unlocks Other Skills

I would love to be a painter. Even a good sketcher. A decent doodler. I have plenty of appreciation for art that really captures a moment well—that invites you to share the wonder or the pain in a face, or the windswept endurance of a place—but I can’t do it myself. My pen on paper can create lines that are just about recognisable, but I know people who can translate the full magic of a moment into brushstrokes, and I’m in awe of that skill. I don’t understand how their fingers can move with such confident precision and grace. And yet, in another way, I do understand—this is the result of practice. I’ve seen enough to know how it works. The skills that appear the most effortless are the ones that come from hours and years and maybe decades of hidden effort.

A Time To Be Tired

In Ecclesiastes 3, Solomon famously says that “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens”. For example, he says that there is “a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot”, there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance”, and the list goes on. It’s a long list, but it isn’t exhaustive, and I’d like to propose another pair that fits the theme:

There is a time to save your strength, and a time to spend it.

The Gardener

When we moved in to our house, the garden was undeveloped. It was a small patch of grass, with a shed. And those things are still there, but they’ve been joined now by a row of roses at the back, with jasmine and passion flowers growing against the wall. Blueberry bushes bloom on one side, with strawberries and grapes beside them. On the other side is an apple tree, a plum tree, and a collection of pots growing a collection of colourful flowers that Jessica cuts and gives away or brings inside for us to enjoy. This year, we’re expanding our window boxes to hold even more flowers. As I write today there are rows of seedlings on the back stoop, reaching up and acclimatising, being prepared for planting—because none of this growth happens overnight. We’ve lived here seven years now, and the progress has been slow. It is measured in months and seasons and years, not hours and days. It was my wife, Jessica, who saw what our undeveloped little plot could become and patiently worked over the years to bring that vision to life. As I go outside to look at the buds forming and opening this spring, I see the fruit of her careful attention and I rise up and bless her for bringing such abundance and beauty to our home.

God Doesn’t Work For Me

“I’m glad you found something that works for you.”

He said it kindly, genuinely happy for me to have found meaning and purpose in my beliefs about God. I said, “Whether or not my beliefs work for me is not the point. I just want to believe what’s true, and live accordingly. I want to know what God is really like—not what I want him to be. My opinion about you doesn’t determine who you really are, and my opinion about God certainly doesn’t change who he is.” God is himself. He is not obligated to work for me—as if my own little self were the centre of all things—he is the centre, and the reason I work at all is because of him. So I’d much rather live in the light of reality, even if it makes me squint, than live in the shadows of my own comfortable delusions.

Slow Happiness

As I look out the window at the sunshine on my garden, I remember the many days that I saw the same view differently—when the glass was streaked with rain, when the ground was hard with frost, and the plants that are budding and growing so beautifully today were nothing but tiny seeds or bare sticks. It all changed so slowly, but it changed so much. And as good as it looks today, I know that there are even better things ahead—the apple blossoms will ripen into apples, the rose stems will bloom with their own unique colours and fill the air with their intoxicating aromas, there will be blueberries and strawberries and maybe this year we’ll finally get some grapes from the grape vine, now that it’s more established. It takes time, establishing. Our blueberry bushes give us a lot more now than they used to, and the apple tree is a little bigger every year. Life is like that, too, isn’t it?

Already Unique

I saw an article recently that focused on how three different men had each created their own unique fashion styles. All of them looked quite different from each other, and all of them had managed to combine their clothes in ways that really did stand out from most of the styles on the street. The point of the article was to explore how these men had been able to craft styles that were actually unique, and how you and I could do the same.

Because that’s what we’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Western culture encourages us to stand out from the crowd and be different, to express our individuality and make sure everyone knows how unique we are. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. The three men in the article are not the only ones trying to be unique these days. There are unique styles all over the place—or there would be, if there weren’t so many other people trying to be unique in the same sorts of ways. It’s getting harder and harder to stand out from the crowd with so many in the crowd working so hard to stand out as well. I guess I could wear a scarf in the summer, or put on a cowboy hat in Ireland, and that would certainly stand out, but is it really unique? Garth Brooks already wore a cowboy hat here, and he looked better in it. Do I need to invent my own hat? Wouldn’t that be crossing the line from unique to just plain weird, like Lady Gaga wearing her dress made of meat? Is that what it takes to be truly unique these days?

Love Is A Skill

Love is a big deal. People talk about it all the time—usually romantic love these days, but the broader concept of love for others in general gets plenty of airtime as well. We seem to agree that love is fundamental to what it means to live well as a human. It’s part of who we are, built in to the human heart. Which is exactly right: love is the image of God shining out, crying out to the world around us that the something or someone we love is worthy of valuing and treasuring. In that sense, love is natural. It is one of the deepest realities of who we are, of who God made us to be.

Then again, anyone who has tried very hard to love other people well will know that love doesn’t always feel very natural. A lot of times it feels more like hard work. “Love your neighbour as yourself” sounds straightforward—until your neighbour hurts you. Ignores you. Uses you for their own purposes. Belittles. Betrays. And I’m supposed to love them?? I’d rather do unto them as they did unto me. They don’t deserve my love.

Commitment Is A Ball

Our world today is flooded with so many options in so many areas of life, from relationships to work to how to spend weekends. In a climate like this, long-term commitments can feel like little more than limitations on our freedom to choose. Then again, what good are a thousand options if we never choose one? That’s what this poem is about:

Don’t (Always) Be Efficient

I love it when a plan comes together smoothly. I love it when everyone works together and leans in and gets the job done—quick and clean. I love it when I can move swiftly through my own tasks for the day, ticking off to-do boxes with a satisfied smile. Efficiency is fantastic. Except when it isn’t.

Being Somebody

At my house growing up, I was somebody. When my mom asked if somebody would bring in firewood, or let the dog out, or fetch the groceries, I knew she was talking to me. As the youngest child, I ended up being the last somebody in the house besides my parents, so I got to be somebody a lot. Eventually it became a joke, and she’d look right at me and say, “could somebody…?” and we’d laugh, and I’d do it, whatever it was.