Welcome to Week Three of our March Guest Post Series here at Five Minute Friday! Each week this month, we’re featuring a different member of the FMF community.

Our guest post and prompt suggestion this week come from FMF community member Annette.

If you’re new to the Five Minute Friday community, you can click here to learn more about the link-up.

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This week’s FMF writing prompt is: ENGAGE

Please enjoy the following guest post from FMF community member, Annette: 

Engage, it’s a funny word right? It can mean so much, and yet, can be meaningless to many. An engagement is often something that is going to happen. Such as a couple gets engaged to be married, one has an engagement to attend (a dinner, a meeting, an event), or one is engaged in activity (soccer, jogging, knitting). To engage in an activity requires some sort of active participation doesn’t it?  A commitment of some sort right?  So how would you relate engagement to the job you hold? To your faith? That’s the question set out for us today hmm?

So a while back at work
They came up with an idea
All staff should tell us what the
Word engagement meant to them.

Blank stares abounded!
I was astonished.
Surely people would have some
Idea of what engagement meant.

Out of some 20 staff in the store
Four people were able to come
With short one-liners and three of
Them only after getting the word defined.

This was a corporate “team-building”
Activity that did spark conversation, but
Mostly derision and comments of
“THIS IS STUPID!”

Isn’t it interesting how some can
Easily define how engagement in the work
Place can be defined, and by talking about it
You can build community, 

And yet have the idea bomb very badly.
I asked my boss how this idea worked
In other stores and learned that it
Basically bombed in them as well.

So someone in corporate guessed
Badly on how to engage with
A whole whack of minimum wage
People, and instead disharmony reigned.

So similarly, God acts on the behalf of
His people, engaging with them in a variety
Of means, and some hear him clearly, and others,
“Hear” him, yet miss his entire message. 

And in missing the message
Either dismiss him, or find a way
To treat the Creator with derision.
Never understanding. 

So I find myself, at the end of this
Contemplation asking myself, what does
The word engagement mean to me in
My relationship with God?

It means taking the time
Listen to that voice within
Saying come and being willing to
Move forward in obedience

Despite the aloneness and
Desolation that often floods within.
Knowing the listening and following
Is better than any alternative.

Don’t you agree?

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Faith-based blogger who loves to review books and write poetry. Rabbits and guinea pigs make me smile as does my hubby and son.  Adding, slowly it seems, a young lady into the mix who thinks my boy is the cat’s meow. 🙂  Life is a season of change, and all we can do is try to keep up. Keeping the Lord involved in it all makes it easier.

Find Annette at https://anetintime.ca.

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Join us with your own five-minute freewrite on the prompt, ENGAGE, below, then visit your link-up neighbor to read their post and leave an encouraging comment: