Our Specialty

Some of you may remember back in the day when the local doctor would actually come to your house (yes, the house call).  My husband grew up in a small town where everybody knew everybody, and the doctor took care of the townsfolk.  He had an office but would often come to the house.  When my sister-in-law came down with polio, the doctor came to the house for a visit and specifically to inoculate the family.  He saw people for every manner of illnesses and even performed some surgeries.

Those days are long gone.  Nowadays we wait months to get an appointment, everything about us is on the computer (to which the doctor refers as he is seeing the patient) and then he sends you to four or five “specialists” for your heart, lungs, ears, eyes, throat, hangnail, etc., etc.

In that same vein (!), each one of us might be called an “I-specialist”.  We quite naturally evaluate things based on how they will affect us.  Our perspective is typically Me, Myself and I.  We have our opinions and agendas and nothing will change them – unless something about them begins to affect us negatively.  Our perspective is always determined by what we think is best.  We can get stuck on an issue and not be willing to budge in our thinking (or, at least in what we will admit) because then that would affect how someone else might perceive us or in our over-all confidence in ourselves.  We all want to be comfortable.  Sometimes even at the expense of being right.

Our specialty is thinking we have it all down.  We’re right and everyone else is wrong.  “If only they’d listen to our vast knowledge and wisdom.  They just don’t get it!”

Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate.  Life may not be all about me (or you).  Me, myself and I may be too narrow a focus.  How might we deal with this calamity?  This “I-specialty”?  It’s not something we can necessarily do on our own.  That’s the first step in escaping this habit:  admitting we need help and recognizing where that help comes from.  “My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”  (Psalm 121:1).  I once heard it said that as long as you are talking, you aren’t learning anything.  Thus, Proverbs 1:5 says, “A wise man will hear and increase in learning.”  You and I aren’t always wrong, but we aren’t always right, either.  Perhaps one of those new expressions has it right after all:  “Oh, get over yourself!”

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit…”  (Philippians 2:3a)

“A time to be silent and a time to speak…”  (Ecclesiastes 3:7b)