Yesterday we talked about the busyness of life and taking an intentional moment to slow down, be still, and just breathe. Today I want to invite you to notice all the activity in your daily life and how it is forming you.

One assumption of this space is that formation happens continuously.

What we think about, how we respond, and how we spend our time impacts who we are becoming. Those little moments and decisions change us, moment by moment. We grow in tiny increments each and every day.

Do you pay attention to how you are being formed?

There are a lot of ways formation can happen. Sometimes it happens intentionally — we sit down each day and pay attention to our interior world and how we’re connecting to God, self, and others. We make decisions about the way we want to spend our time or how we want to respond to a given situation. We choose to take up little habits or disciplines that build our character a bit more in the direction we desire.

But formation also happens when we’re not paying attention. We respond, we form opinions and beliefs, and we spend our time in certain ways that we don’t even think about. We just do it automatically. We take in opinions and responses of others and allow them to shape what we think and believe. We don’t even notice it’s happening. We feel things and allow those feelings to form our core beliefs. We don’t even realize our core beliefs are being shaped.

Formation happens continuously — sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

Take a few moments and consider what sorts of things are informing your thoughts, beliefs, and behavior right now. How do you spend your time on any given day? What thoughts preoccupy you? What or who do you rely upon for information to impact your opinions and beliefs?

When you look at your life right now, how are you being formed? And who might you be in the process of becoming, as a result?