To know I can rise to the dawn of a new day,
Having surrendered my fatigued sorrows to a night of rest…
To see my hope ascend with the sun
And feel the comfort that only Your presence can provide…
This is the story,
This is the song
Of a heart made glad by love.
To hear the sound of laughter in places reserved for mourning,
Knowing the troubles are lighter lately because You carry my load… [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
This is a season of Death-By-To-Do-List. The quiet pause, lethargy, and feeding frenzy of the holidays are followed by the jump-started, resolution-driven frenzy of the New Year. So this morning I started my journaling by listing one or two things I still haven’t done this week. And the one or two became six or seven.
“I swear, I’ll die by checklist overload,” I wrote.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s missing in our life planning. It’s so easy to get lost in the whirlwind of the frenetic or even the focus of the goal-directed that we neglect some of the most significant parts of the plan.
Like waiting.
I’m all about making mission statements that lead to goals lists that lead to action steps toward making those goals and mission a reality. I get it. I completely understand that if you aren’t taking massive action in the direction of your dreams you are probably kissing some of them good-bye.
How do you respond, however, when the dream or passion is completely authentic, but there is literally nothing you can do about it today – at least in outward to-do-list fashion? How do you keep the important, important, when it’s not front-and-center in your appointment book? [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
(Something of a “life lessons year in review,” in no certain order. I’d love to hear yours. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.)
1. How awesome your cancer surgeon is.
2. How nice people can be, even when you wish they would just hate you.
3. How God provides, even sometimes for fools.
4. The sun really does come out tomorrow.
5. How to spell “aneurysm.”
6. Life goes on, with you or without you.
7. Contrary to the words to the MASH theme, suicide is NOT painless.
8. Failure doesn’t stop people from loving you.
9. Rejection does not come with a cocoon to wrap you away for a while.
10. Nobody is more committed to your success than you are. [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
On October 4, 1943, Bing Crosby recorded a song that captured the imagination of millions of Americans. Within three weeks it was on the top music charts, and remained there for 11 weeks. A year later, it returned to the charts again. Since then, it has been recorded by nearly 250 artists. It was the first song broadcast into space, and remains to this day one of the most cherished songs of all time.
Remember, the entire world was galvanized in a world war, and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific fighting for our future. Nearly the entire country was unified behind our fighting men.
The name of the song – “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
Something about Christmas makes us want to go home, or at least to be somewhere with people we care about. [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
It’s a famous scene in the movie “City Slickers.” Curley, the cowboy character played by Jack Palance, says to Billy Midlife-Crisis-Angst Crystal:
“You city folk, you worry about a lot of [stuff]… You all come up here about the same age, same problems. Spend about 50 weeks a year getting’ knots in your rope and then you think two weeks up here will untie ‘em for ya’. And none of you get it. Do you know what the secret of life is?”
“No, what?” says Crystal.
“This,” Curley says, holding up one finger.
“Your finger?”
“One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean [nothing].”
“That’s great, but… what’s the one thing?”
“That’s what you gotta figure out.”
Tough times have a way of bringing out complicated questions. Ever since Cain killed Abel, or Job’s friends made a “sympathy” visit, people have responded to adversity by haggling and hand-wringing over the deep, often-unanswerable questions in life. Questions like, “Why is this happening to me?” or “Who’s responsible for that?”
During times like that, we all need somebody who can again bring us back to consciousness. [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Pssst.
Tap, tap, tap.
Sorry to interrupt. I know you have a lot of important things on your mind, so I’ll only keep you for a minute.
Oh. And let me quickly say that I’m not here to sell you anything. But, as the envelope says, you may already be a winner!
So wouldn’t it be sad if a winner was living like… well, otherwise?
Wouldn’t it be tragic if this incredible wealth was there all along, but went unnoticed or unclaimed?
Let me show you how extraordinary the Grand Prize is. [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Thomasville, Alabama. A long time ago. I was driving from Jackson to Tuscaloosa and had stopped for gas at one of those places where they still pumped it for you. Young man walks out and gets the pump going while I’m pretty much minding my own business. I’m wearing jeans and tennis shoes, with some casual shirt.
He eyes me and asks, “You a minister?”
(I hated then and hate now looking like a preacher.)
“Yes,” I replied, surprised. “How did you know?”
“You have this glow about ‘cha,” he said with a smile.
I was surprised again, and blessed. This wasn’t a particularly glowing trip. I was driving north to unload a car on the back end of a dumb purchase that had left us pretty beaten down financially. It was a desperate move to get out of a stupid debt.
Glow? I’d have to take that one by faith. It felt more like I was panting.
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2)
Ever feel like you were panting? Like you couldn’t quite catch your breath as you went from one thing to another? From one stressor to another? From one disappointment to another? [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
I still miss her sometimes. Pity I’m so busy I don’t miss her more. For me it’s mostly in passing sighs… Like now. (-From my journal a couple of days ago, referring to my mother, who died earlier this year.)
Heard any sermons on longing lately?
I doubt it.
In spite of the fact that it’s such a common experience, and one that is treated a surprising number of times in the Bible, “Dealing with Longing” doesn’t typically generate offerings, baptisms, or slick series brochures from the local worship establishment.
And yet it’s there… right in plain sight. The Bible’s own version of “Miss You Like Crazy.”
Paul wrote those wild child Corinthians a pretty dress-you-down letter (we call it 1 Corinthians). Their response? They turned their hearts, and longed to see Paul. His reply? Same thing. [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Call him Benjamin.
Nice Hebrew name for this fictional, but oh-so-real young man who lived outside of Jerusalem in the first century. Benjamin is 20 years old, and his family raised him in a typical Jewish home.
Until that day. [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
“Sure I may be tuckered, and I may give out, but I won’t give IN!” (Molly Brown, from “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”)
We spend a lot of time thinking about sinking.
In the mental and spiritual circles I travel in, we focus a lot on discouragement, sadness, grief and such. The most-read article I have written this year is titled, “The Sinking Soul.”
And for good reason. We live in a broken world. Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted. A significant part of the New Testament was written to people who face severe, mind-numbing hostility and pain. And left to our own devices, the devil has sinking souls for breakfast.
But maybe it’s time for a different look. [click to continue…]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }