Pondering over Passion

I’m in a slight quandary over the subject of passion. What is it? Where does it come from? What makes some people passionate over painting and others collecting engine numbers of locomotives: train spotters, they still exist, you know. Is it not odd that one person’s pleasure is another person’s dread? Take myself for example; I don’t play computer games, not on tablets, phones, gizmo’s, gadgets, boxes – none of it works for me. I don’t play them to relax me or stimulate me; I don’t play them to beat them or to be beaten by them; I don’t anticipate the next release since I live in my own little world of not being aware of their first release. I don’t do games. There’s just no passion for them.  Other people do, lots of people in fact, there’s a whole industry built around it I understand.

So what is passion? Wikipedia says: ‘Passion (from the Latin verb patere meaning to suffer) is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion, compelling enthusiasm or desire for anything.’

Passion burns. Its symbol is fire. It consumes.

So what are you passionate about? Or perhaps this question is more appropriate – What were you passion about? Since passion can be killed, it can die. Experience teaches that many of our passions get crushed. And often they get crushed not by big things, but by lots of little things which when added together make the big thing which kills passion. Discouragement, disappointment, frustration, criticism, time restrictions, a lack of funds – all of these things act as passion killers.

To keep passion alive we have to work with it and not against it. Passion needs fuel if it is to keep on burning; we have to tend our passions to keep them alive. Consider what Paul said to the young Timothy. ‘For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. (1 Tim 2:6)’ He needed to work at. Undoubtedly God had given Timothy gifts, but Paul knows that any gift not tended can be lost; any passion not kindled will slowly ebb away.

Still not sure what your passion is? Then sit down, open your mind and be prepared to be blown away. This statement, by John Eldridge, if read on a warm summers days whilst sipping a cool beverage will change your life if you act on it. Here goes…

“Do not ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself, what makes you come alive inside, for what the world needs is people who have come alive inside.”

Brilliant!

This is where passion is mined, in the inner desires of the human heart – go for it!

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