I found myself strangely moved.
The other day a pastor friend, who is walking through new beginnings of his own, sent me a copy of this Thomas Kinkade painting from 2005 titled “Gate of New Beginnings.” I have always appreciated the work of “the Painter of Light,” but mostly at a distance. This one felt up close and personal.
Here’s what Kinkade himself said about it: [click to continue…]
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I think I’m going to do it again.
I think I’m skipping New Year’s Resolutions for something that for me and many others, has seemed to work much better. I’m referring to building my year around one simple, clear theme that reflects where my spiritual, mental and overall life wheels have been turning.
You can read more about the idea behind the idea here.
What’s interesting is that in establishing that one-word theme, you have no idea at the start where it may take you. My one word for this past year was Lean. You can read more about it here. This year I have learned much about leaning in, leaning on the Lord, and getting lean than I bargained for. Some of that was a case of seeing the light; some was a case of feeling the heat.
To be clear, I didn’t always lean well this year. But I learned more, experienced more, accomplished more, and was challenged more by that level of focus on that one word than if I had made a list of New Year’s resolutions.
So. What about now? What’s this year all about?
To get a clear idea, I knew I’d have to go to the Sanctuary – to that place where I seem to hear the Lord more clearly than anywhere else.
Time to head to the shower.
I happened to be in Athens, Georgia for my nephew’s wedding, and my hotel room just happened to have a shower readily available. So there in the steady spray of life and spirit made possible by the Holiday Inn Express, I began to wait on the Lord and search for my Descants of the Soul. What has been the “back beat” – the song behind the song – of my life over the most recent seasons?
If I had turned it into a dialogue between me and the Lord, it would have gone something like this: [click to continue…]
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There are two kinds of productivity – productivity in the urgent and productivity in the important.
Productivity in the urgent involves deadlines…
checklists…
stress relief…
making a living. [click to continue…]
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I will sing a new song to You, O God;
Upon a harp of ten strings I will sing praises to You,
Who gives salvation to kings,
Who rescues David His servant from the evil sword.
This comes from a victory song.
David celebrates victories he’s won to this point.
What now? [click to continue…]
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The other day my son-in-law and oldest grandson had this little exchange:
Cohen: What does that sign say?
Curtis: Pedestrian crossing. Are you a pedestrian?
Cohen: No. I’m a Christian.
Super funny at face value. Typically profound as children’s funny things can be when you dig deeper.
Everybody knows what pedestrian, the noun, means, right? “Walker.”
Or in more recent days, “somebody who texts without a seat belt.”
But as an adjective, “pedestrian” means something different. The dictionary definition:
“lacking inspiration or excitement; dull.”
Synonyms include words like dull, boring, tedious, monotonous, uneventful, unremarkable, tiresome, wearisome, uninspired, unimaginative, unexciting, uninteresting, and uninvolving.
Are you pedestrian?
No. I’m Christian.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if being a Christian really was the opposite of being pedestrian? Wouldn’t it be amazing if somebody said, referring to one of us, “He’s too much of a Christian to live a pedestrian life”? [click to continue…]
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It was painful and ugly, Lisa told us. She had left town to attend a school, presumably to train people to be worship leaders. What she discovered instead was an unhealthy, “I’m always right” form of egotistical authority-wielding. If anybody in the so-called “school” suggested an idea that didn’t line up perfectly with the ego-polishing done “on the stage,” there was hell to pay. And the favorite punch(ing) line: “You need to buy into the vision.”
“We’ve been spending some time rethinking our organization’s vision,” John said.
“Why is that?”
“Because we need a better way of communicating to the public and to our people the essence of why we’re here.”
May I offer a polite suggestion? (If not, I’ll be happy to offer a rude one.)
Before you start planning or pontificating on what you, somebody else, or the organization “needs,” don’t you think it would be a good idea to have a clear definition of “need?”
And before you merge onto the leadership freeway, teeming with thousands of commuters headed, they say, in the direction of their “vision,” don’t you think you need to have a grasp on what a vision actually is? [click to continue…]
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Despite the apparent rudeness of its interruption of our slumber…
Despite our appeals to caffeine or “just five more minutes…”
Beyond the duty of deadlines or starting times…
You and I were created to embrace the celebration of the Glory of the Morning.
“Glory” refers to something made beautiful by another,
Despite its clumsy raw form or ugly beginnings.
And in that context, perhaps nothing starts out clumsier or uglier
Than the forced march of time into a new day.
But the beauty of your dawn is that it’s not up to you to make it beautiful.
The same God who said, “To everything there is a season, [click to continue…]
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Got caught last week. I’m talking deer-in-the-headlights, flat-footed, let-me-know-if-I’m-drooling caught. All with a simple question.
I was having lunch with a friend to told me he got caught flat-footed with a question he didn’t have an answer for. “So I thought I’d ask you the same question.”
Gee, thanks, I think.
The question: What are you looking forward to right now?
Huh?
Say that again?
What are you looking forward to?
“Duh….”
“I know, right!” he said gleefully.
I was coming off a couple of weeks of intense work, up until about 2:00 every night. I was in head-down, just-get-it-done mode. Who has time to think ahead?
Precisely.
I had no clue how to answer that because I wasn’t looking forward to anything.
Enough about me. How about you? What are you looking forward to?
I’ve had some time to think about that question a lot since then. Especially since Cassie, my daughter, came over the same night with her planning notebook for the Disney trip we’re all taking this Christmas, adorned with vintage Mickey on the cover.
I should probably confess here that my “anticipation” of a Disney trip for 11 people somewhere has the words “legalized theft” in it. But that’s beside the point.
The point here is that she’s living the trip now and we’re still nearly four months out. She’s already picked out the restaurants where we’re dining, gotten detailed maps of the whole Magic Domain, logged onto the advice sites as to how to avoid the long lines and all that.
In short, Cassie has her A-Game – her anticipation game – at least when it comes to Christmas this year. And she was pretty inspiring to me to find my own.
Here’s the bottom line: [click to continue…]
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I’m a huge believer that the quality of your life and leadership is the direct result of the quality of the questions you ask. Ask good questions, you get good answers and good direction. Ask lame questions, you get lame directions. Ask no questions at all, and you’ll soon be the blind bleeding the blind.
Here are seven daily questions any leader, parent, or achiever can ask quickly to zero in on the most effective use of your time and life. Answering any three daily can quickly shape your day and your influence. Aligning the answers to all seven daily can revolutionize it.
This little collection uses the classic “five W’s and an H – who what, when where, why and how – with an added little bonus – an “if” question. [click to continue…]
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I love photography for two reasons. First, I love capturing light and images and special moments that I can share and re-live. The one to the left is a recent sample.
Second, taking pictures puts me on the right side of the camera. As long as I can stay away from that nosy lens, I can imagine that I actually look the way I do when I look at myself in the mirror. No awkward angles. No unflattering poses. No ruthless inventory of how I really look.
The same kind of thing happens in the spiritual realm. There are plenty of ways to pose so that we get a flattering, but dishonest look at ourselves. That’s unhealthy for two reasons. First, it can put us in denial of something that can really hurt us in the long run. Second, it can produce shame that blinds us to our great, great value to God and to the world.
How would you like a strategy for taking an honest inventory of your heart and soul?
Wait.
Maybe I should phrase that a different way…
Do you need a strategy for taking an honest inventory of your heart and soul? I don’t really care whether you want it or not.
Here are eight questions that can turn the lights on in your spiritual life. They can be used alone or together. You can go through them in 15 minutes, or an hour, or an entire day. The questions are based on Paul’s energetic series of charges to the Thessalonians:
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:16-22).
Take a few minutes or however long you can. Get alone with a journal, legal pad, or an electronic tablet and write down some notes based on your first response to these questions: [click to continue…]
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