Volume XXII, Number 44 (Issue 1100) | October 28, 2024
Content and Context
Today marks the eleven hundredth issue of Musings. That is one essay (mini sermon as some have described it) a week for more than twenty-one years. It is a milestone I never envisioned let alone expected to reach when I sent the first issue to a handful of friends in 2002. Along the way I have added several thousand readers and with your input together with that of untold client interactions, I have managed to find something to write about week after week. It hasn’t always been easy for me or you for that matter. Not every essay has been a gem after all. But it does seem there have been enough worthwhile thoughts offered here that each of us has found reason to maintain the weekly effort. Lord willing, I hope to write a few more issues before I lay down that pen of mine for the final time.
Many of you have been along for the ride for a good part of the past two decades. I am sincerely and eternally grateful for your devoted readership as well as the countless notes you have sent me in response to something that has appeared in this space. That feedback has been instrumental in allowing me to keep the process going.
In composing these essays and reading your responses, the one thing that has struck me the most is your ability to discover meanings that were beyond what I intended. In that way, though content is important, context has been key. Because our contexts have not always aligned, it has been possible for many of you to see something in my words that served you in a way I could not have foreseen in that moment. I find that awe inspiring – not because of something I did so much as the influences working in your world. As one who is guided by and informed through my faith, I ascribe those unique and varied insights to the workings of the Holy Spirit.
I consider today a representative example of that Spirit speaking to me. As I considered topics for this week my first thoughts ran to two themes. The first was level setting – an increasingly popular bit of business jargon that is defined as making sure everyone is operating with the same set of data. Taken from a mathematical construct involving the interplay between two or more variables and a constant, perhaps you can appreciate the business world’s co-opting of that term. The other topic I considered for today also comes to us from the realm of mathematics – specifically, formulas that explain data distributions. In that line of thinking I considered opining on a normal or Gaussian distribution and its near polar opposite, the barbell distribution. (By way of reference, a barbell distribution is routinely associated with a financial or investment strategy though it can and is also used to describe the nature of other data sets.)
Because I did not travel either of those math-related paths I had a solid first draft in ninety minutes. I am sure we are equally glad I opted out of a topic tied to mathematical concepts in favor or one that honors our ability to see the same thing yet interpret it differently. Here is to that remarkable as well as confounding ability whereby two people can view/hear the identical thing but have it speak to them in different ways. It is that interplay between content and context that gives rise to conflict and creativity alike.
Soli Deo Gloria
“To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.” 1 Corinthians 12:8-12
J. Keith Hughey
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E-mail: keith@jkeithhughey.com
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Copyright 2024 by J. Keith Hughey. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted for reproduction and redistribution of this essay as provided under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Recent issues of Musings may be found at www.jkeithhughey.com. Your comments are always welcome.