A good analogy is like...

I love making analogies. Just ask my girlfriend, ginni. I do it all the time. Sometimes it can be really cool, other times it's quite a stretch (like Michael Phelps' wingspan!). Part of it, I think, comes from my rather strange sense of humor. I love a good pun (Go Tucker! Don't Trip!), and thinking of puns seems to use the same part of my brain as thinking of analogies.

A bigger part, though, is that it helps me to understand and, therefore, to teach. If I can relate my current circumstances to a familiar concept, it helps me to understand my circumstances better. Then, I can use that new understanding to learn something from it and, possibly, teach that lesson to others. As a Sunday School teacher and Kids Town leader, my mind is always looking for ways to relate some random situation to the current or upcoming lesson. In general, it's really cool.

However, there is a downside to it. I don't struggle with learning how to move forward in my relationship with Christ, I struggle with the actual forward motion itself. I think that's the biggest thing I have to work on right now is translating what I learn to what I do. It's like I'm really good at understanding the instructions, but I struggle with actually following them. ;-)

How are you at taking something you learn and actually applying it to your life? Do you take what you learn in the sermon or bible study and integrate it into your lifestyle? Or does it stay in your head as something you understand but don't follow through on?

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