Drawing a Blank

Can you draw a blank? Have you ever had a blank slate? Do you even know what a “slate” is? How about staring down a blank wall…blank screen…blank piece of paper?

It’s happened to me.

There have been times I’ve been speechless, but it doesn’t mean my mind was not racing for a correct response or reaction. Equally, learning when “not” to say what I’m thinking? Well, I just paint a blank look on my face.

Perhaps we need to learn better how to be “blank” about life as it happens around us. I’m startled by people’s looks, expressions, idiosyncrasies all the time. Maybe learning how to be “blank” about them is the best way to be.

Truth be known? I think some are who they are to dry and shock the rest of us. There must be something deep in their world that says this is their purpose in life.

Let’s practice drawing a blank!

When my son was pre-school age, my bride would ride with him on the bike path in Anchorage, with our toddler in a bicycle seat on the back. He was reading so young! And he practiced by reciting everything he saw! Even those words that are improper to be spoken in mixed company!

You can overreact, or draw a blank and handle it without flashing your anger, disgust, or metering out punishment.

This is perhaps the hardest blank to handle. It’s difficult to learn how to handle the shock factor, and as I’ve already stated, many like to do and say just so they can shock the socks off you! Learn to handle it early, and you may just tone down their actions! Or, they may get more flamboyantly weird to work on getting a rise out of you.

At some point, and I think we are there today, we will all walk around with a blank look, you know, a thousand-yard stare, because everything around us is just plain weird!

Replacing The Blank

Recently I was practicing my response to something I knew would cause me to react. Not that I would be overly shocked, but it’s difficult keeping a blank look and you need to learn how to respond in advance so as not to offend.

Someone from my past always had a response to every infant he was introduced to, as the proud parents would show off their newborn. Of course, the back story is learning to respond to every possibility of a child that is presented. That little darling isn’t always looking like a darling! Accessorizing them with those outfits? Whoa! Rein in that response, draw a blank look, and learn to say something neutral that can be taken any way the hearer needs!

“My, what a baby!”

You can prepare yourself in advance by practicing this technique to everything around you! What someone thinks matches in a color scheme, to their choices of reading material, or even their love for a certain genre of music! My… Oh, my…!

Yet, it’s a two-way street. Giving blank looks…and receiving them in return! Sometimes that makes communication difficult.

Making Sense of It

I’m still learning this, and even though I’m past 65 years of age, it’s a treasure to #Thimk it through, have a better #Perception of life around me, and use a few #Algorithms to follow the logic.

I want to share this process with you. Okay? Here goes!

Seemingly, everywhere the Apostle Paul went, he was approached, prodded and pushed out by those who could not accept his message. One of my favorite recitations of this comes from Acts, Chapter 17, and it’s not just in one city or location. This chapter deals with Paul’s approach to others and is just a sample of his ministry.

As he shares Jesus Christ at the synagogue in Thessalonica, there are those who cannot be “blank” about their view…

But the Jews who were not persuaded,
becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, and gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out,
“These who have turned the world upside down have come here too. Jason has harbored them, and these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another king—Jesus.”
(Acts 17:5-7 NKJV)

It sounds like politics today! Maybe this is human nature, but I find we get little positive actions done when we are so negatively responding.

Think It Through – #THIMK

Think about your response to others. I’ve sat with many who are simply aghast at something that just walked through the doors of the restaurant. Immediately, their eyes dart and lips curl, and their words astonish me!

Paul and Silas leave secretly by night to their next stop. Berea. Just 50 miles away, but maybe far enough from the influence of their previous stop.

These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica,
in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
(Acts 17:11 NKJV)

But those in Thessalonica heard, and promptly troubled the world with their ire. Paul is sent to Athens… From the frying pan, and into the fire, as we are prone to say!

Athens

I want to travel to Greece someday, and Athens will be one of my treasured stops. The Parthenon, Acropolis, and the remnant of treasured history. Though now nearly 3 Millenium old, to Paul it was still the center of Greco thought and architecture. Yes. Greece was now part of the Roman Empire, but their focus was still tracking down new thinking.

It boasted of its rich philosophical tradition inherited from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, of its literature and art, and of its notable achievements in the cause of human liberty. Even if in Paul’s day it ‘lived on its great past’, and was a comparatively small town by modern criteria, it still had an unrivaled reputation as the empire’s intellectual metropolis.


~Stott, J. R. W. (1994). The message of Acts: the Spirit, the church & the world (p. 276). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Athens was given over to “idols” and this stirred Paul! So, he went to the synagogue and marketplace and did his normal teaching.

Pause for a moment. He’s stirred! His spirit is provoked. This is the same Greek word where Paul teaches us in a favored chapter (1 Corinthians 13) that Love is not easily provoked! If he is stirred, it must be due to the excessive expanse of idolatry. “The city was a junkyard of idols...” (Acts 17:16, MSG)

Follow The Logic – #Algorithm

Paul was not ignorant, nor was he untrained. His schooling was the result of the greatest schools of Jewish and Godly thought. In fact, Paul (when he was called Saul), was probably provoked enough to react to Christians until he met Jesus on the Road to Damascus. Something changed. Immediately the blank was filled with a new understanding of his knowledge and experience.

So. Where he was calm with his presentation of the new “doctrine of Christ” with his countrymen when he faced the expanse of ungodliness in foreign lands, there was something that “stirred his spirit!” This was part of his commission!

“…he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.” (Acts 9:15)

Sometimes we must be stirred to handle the shock of the days and times we are living in. But “being” is not the same as “doing something about it!” What does he do? He focuses on his own countrymen in the synagogue and the marketplace – his normal way of sharing Christ!

Then, the door opens to others! Philosophers, Epicureans, and Stoics! What is this new thought you are presenting? (Acts 17:18-21)

Open Your Heart – #Perception

Paul is now standing in front of them. His mind and spirit are finding a hunger and reception for something new and different. How do you reach a new audience? What does the “blank in your mind” say to you now?

Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus [Mars Hill] and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you:
(Acts 17:22-23 NKJV)

Perceiving other’s positions (#Perception), analyzing your thinking and their lives (#Algorithm), thinking it through (#Thimk), your mind should never be blank!

Why? You take your time to deal with the situation!

Handling The Moment – #Be and #Do

Quick thinking and rapid response often get us to put our foot in the mouth!

Paul could have reached out negatively, but he chose a reasoned response. In fact, the reality of any moment is that we have something to say and we insert the words before the moment passes us by as the situation unfolds.

Perhaps this is why we are all in so much trouble all the time! We are worried our voices will not be heard! So. Interject. Speak quickly. Loudly. Make a point.

That’s what we think is our most important contribution.

Though I don’t know this as a fact, there are many philosophers and thinkers who have probably learned to speak only when the clamoring dies down and they have a measured response to give. I can imagine they boil down the rhetoric to a few words, that, if you think it through, you will probably modify your place in the conversation!

Imagine the drawl of Mark Twain, pipe in hand, resting on the porch in his favorite rocking chair, dispensing logical thought with a slow speech.

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” ~Mark Twain

I’m okay with a “blank stare” at this moment. Why? My brain is processing, my mouth is closed, and that thousand-yard stare is unfocused and looking down-range.