Turns out there was something almost as satisfying Monday night as watching Eddie Lacy, A. J. McCarron and company put looks of futility and bewilderment on yet another BCS opponent – a game, by the way, I have waited since 1966 to witness.
It was a commercial. For Dr. Pepper, of all things. Now as long as I’ve known anything about Dr. Pepper and commercials, they have always had some kind of big song and dance production. And this commercial was no exception.
What was exceptional was the song in the commercial. It sort of stopped me in my tracks. I actually hit rewind to see the thing again. (If you know anything about me and commercials, you will know this rarely happens.) If you’d like to see the commercial, it’s already on YouTube, and you can watch it here.
I didn’t run out and buy Dr. Pepper. But I did hurry to iTunes and found the song. I just discovered it was released on iTunes on January 7, the day the commercial ran.
The song is by the Nashville group Vinyl Hearts, and it’s called, “I Am.” You can hear it in its entirety by clicking below. Please, hear the song in its entirety. [click to continue…]
A few years ago Mike Ashcraft came up with a revolutionary idea. In considering what we all intuitively know – that New Year’s resolutions are inherently powerless to produce real life change – Mike proposed capturing the essence of the person we want to become, or what we most want God to do for us in one simple word.
“My One Word,” he called it.
The idea caught fire, and his web site, myoneword.org, became a gathering place for people all over the world to share their core essential idea for that particular year.
I arrived late to that party when a LifeVesting reader pointed me to the site a couple of years ago. I was captivated by the idea, and landed on the word, Finish! as my word for that year.
I revisited the idea when I wrote this post about things to do before the end of the year. I learned in the process that Mike, along with Rachel Olsen, has since written a book that is now available to guide you through the process.
In prayerfully considering what my one word could and should be for this year, I began searching for the themes the Lord seems to have been playing out in my life recently – what I call the Descants of the Soul. Those themes have a way of ebbing and flowing. And it didn’t take me long at all to land on what my one word should be… [click to continue…]
In his book, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, Chuck Swindoll tells of two young women from Southern California who spent the day doing some last-minute Christmas shopping in Tijuana. After a successful day of bargain hunting, they returned to their car. One of the ladies glanced down in the gutter and noticed something squirming, as if in pain. On closer examination, they saw what appeared to be a dog – a tiny Chihuahua – struggling for its life. It was breathing heavily, shivering, and barely able to move. Their hearts went out to the pathetic little animal. Their compassion wouldn’t let them drive off and leave it there to die.
The friends decided to take it home with them and do their best to nurse it back to health. Afraid of being stopped and having the little creature detected by border patrol officers, they carefully placed it on some papers among their packages in the trunk of their car. Within minutes they were back in California and only a couple of hours from home. One of the women held the sick little Chihuahua the rest of the way. [click to continue…]
We all were born with the capacity to dream. To envision a life that could be… that will be… and the pathways to get there. To imagine a tomorrow that’s better…
Safer…
Happier…
Stronger…
Lovelier.
“Be fruitful and multiply,” He said. That’s the stuff that dreams are made of. We dream of fruitfulness. We dream of abundance.
But life on this side of the Garden sometimes aims our dreams toward the mirror. Nighttime comes to the soul, and our imagination gets lost in what once was. Of those we once dreamed with or about, but now for whatever reason are lost to us. And it hurts like hell. [click to continue…]
Know what’s always messed me up with New Year’s resolutions? New Year’s Day is a holiday. So all those goals and new beginnings typically start around January 2 and I’m already a day behind. Then I need to put up Christmas stuff and I’m two days behind. I’m getting tired just thinking about it. So I need some mental rest from the holidays. Three days behind.
So this year I brightened up and decided that this will take a bit more planning and thought. And yes, I’m talking slap-dab in the middle of the Christmas holidays.
So I’m writing this to myself, but inviting you to come along for the fun. Here are ten suggestions to prepare for the coming year – do all these by December 31, and you can have New Year’s Day off. I know, I know! You’re welcome! Click here to get started
It was Christmas Eve morning, I don’t know, about 12 years ago, I guess. I got up way ahead of everybody else, and for some reason had to go to the grocery store. And for some other reason I can’t remember, it wasn’t our regular grocery store.
When I walked in, I noticed that the supermarket had a case of 24 Christmas gel candles marked down to a buck apiece. On a whim, I bought an entire case of them and hauled them home.
I was inspired.
(By the way, completely irrelevant side note, but that’s just one more reason to do your Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. Black Friday’s got nuthin’ on the bargains you can find the day before Christmas. More here.)
I got back home and everybody was still settled in to their long winter’s nap. So I went to work. I sat down at the computer, grabbed a sheet of labels, and printed 24 that read, “Thanks for the light you bring to our lives every day. Merry Christmas, The Wood Family.”
Boy, was I inspired. Click here to see what happened
Remember what it was like as a kid to go to sleep on Christmas Eve?
Stockings hung with care, note and snack left near the tree…
Listening with both ears for any sound that resembled, well, anything…
Sneaking a peek out the window to see if you could see, you-know-who…
Trying to go to sleep cause you-know-who can’t you-know-what until you’re fast asleep.
[Cue the choir…]
Then came the morning! Wow! Where to start? All that stuff!
And then… [click to continue…]
Davidson High School, Mobile, Alabama. Circa 1974. My freshman year. I’m standing in the cafeteria line, waiting to decide whether I was going with the hamburger or whatever today’s chef’s choice was. It was there I spotted her, headed toward the faculty dining room. This was worth losing my spot in line for.
She was our school guidance counselor, and also an experienced English teacher. She was wise about things I was ignorant of.
She also happened to be my great aunt.
“Aunt Helen!” said I. “I wanted to ask your advice about something.”
“What’s that,” she replied.
“Well, see, I’m writing a book – a novel – and I wanted to get some advice from you about how to get it published.”
(I should pause here to interpret what “novel” meant. I probably had about five chapters, about five notebook pages hand-written each, about a tough-guy high school kid who winds up dying for the girl he loves, who happened to have the same name as the girl I was fixated on in the ninth grade. Anyway…)
Her advice was sage – way wiser than my 14 years. She didn’t write off my dreams and tell me that 14-year-olds don’t get published as novelists. She didn’t boggle my mind about query letters, agents or publishing houses either. She offered me words of encouraging truth. [click to continue…]
This just in, in case you missed it. Christmas is less than a month away.
True confession: Yesterday I snarled in my journal, “I’ll just be glad when it’s over.”
But today, in honor of the late Zig Ziglar, who passed away yesterday, I’m “doing a checkup from the neck up.”
Every year, we have the same choice when it comes to the enchantment and the challenges of the holidays. Do we hunker down, sit tight, and hope for the best? Or do we seek to flourish? To make the most of our relationships, our worship, and even our painful experiences?
Survive or Thrive? It’s up to you. It’s up to me.
When it comes to being a thriver, here are five suggestions, for how you can come out of the bunker and actually have a season of delight:
[click to continue…]
Old friend called yesterday. It had been a while.
“I’m calling to ask you to pray,” she began. “I’ve just had a bombshell dropped in my lap.”
Like you would do, I’m sure, my mind started racing at the possibilities. Family? Finances? Health? It could be anything.
I won’t tell you what hers was, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was handed some bad news she didn’t see coming.
Kabloom!
What matters more is that she was really making some progress in some areas of her life, and this jeopardizes all that.
Kabloom again!
And what matters to you is that next time it could be you.
Have you ever noticed that when you start moving in a positive direction, life has a way of testing you out of center field with alarming or disarming stuff? And it comes dressed in any number of ugly outfits. [click to continue…]
