What?

What is most important to you?

It's never too early or too late to ask this question. In fact, I think this question should be a constant point of reference for us. This question can weed out the garbage in our lives. This question can help keep us focused. This question can help bring meaning to our days.

What is most important to you? Are you living it?

Gratitude

We have so much to be grateful for. Sometimes we forget. Other times we ignore. And still other times we deny that we have much to be thankful for. But look around you. Look within you. Look at the people in your life.

If we all started appreciating what we have more than worrying about what we don't have, we'd all be better off.

Painting and Repainting

I've seen them working on again and off again for weeks. Scraping the paint, sanding, painting a fresh coat, then another. Attentive to their work, patient as the sun is hot, the three men keep at it.

Their work on the church steps and wheelchair ramp remind me of how we ought to approach our relationship with God. Slow, patient, and attentive. Nothing too fast. Steady work. Keep at it; keep praying, studying, thinking, serving.

Unlike the painting job, though, our spiritual work will never end. We must keep painting and repainting, sanding and scraping, even as God sands, scrapes, and repaints us.

Small Steps

Jesus counsels us not to worry. But how can we not feel some anxiety, some measure of fear when we consider the unknown, uncertain future of our lives and the lives of those we love? How can we abandon worry when own our personal histories teach us that we have very little control over what may befall us?

We know, intellectually, that we should not worry but trust God. But how do we practice such a robust trust in divine grace and sympathy? How—concretely—do we live into Providence? How do we abandon ourselves to Providence and lose the anxiety and worry that besets the world over?

Small steps. Begin with four words, often repeated: “Thy will be done.”

Sick Day

A rainy Sunday morning

And the sound from three blocks away

Pushing through the foggy quietude,

The ringing of the First Presbyterian bell

A sound soft but strong

Sharp thud

Escaping into the neighborhood,

Which is long accustomed to the old voice.

The ring is no stranger to the

Hair-like moss dripping from oaks and magnolias

Hanging high over the cracked blacktop

Chipped red brick hiding underneath.

The ring grabs the ears and imagination

And I can see the red-robed choir

Ready for the procession and

An acolyte, maybe my son,

Leading the whole holy bunch of them

Into a sacred hour out of step with the times

But into an eternity,

 As I lie flat on my back at home

Listening to the bell and a fire in the hearth

And to a little voice that whispers

“Be still and you will heal.”

Blessings

Do you ever feel caught between two ways of living? Caught between a life that longs for the blessing of the world and the life that longs for the blessing of God?

The world blesses glamor, physical prowess, brilliance, efficiency, beauty, and money. Jesus does not bless these things. Jesus blesses mercy, peacemaking, righteousness, and purity of heart, among other things.

We need to learn which blessings to ultimately seek. We need to learn to ultimately value the blessings that Jesus valued over against the blessings that the world values.

AZ

It’s hard to know what to feel, except sadness and disgust. It’s hard to know what to think except, “Why?”

Why the murders? Why did a 22 year old guy want to kill people? Why, for that matter, do we live as if something equally tragic doesn’t occur every day in our nation? Do we simply feel powerless to affect any change, whatsoever—in ourselves and in our culture? Do we simply live overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of the violence that we see on TV, at the movies, hear on the news?

O, how God must weep.