Lord, teach me. . . .

Life is not so much about beginnings and endings as it is about going on and on and on. It is about muddling through the middle. –Anna Quindlen My beloved and I have been on vacation for two weeks, in part driving from Colorado to Montana to visit family, and back again. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking! We drove through Grand Tetons National Park and Yellowstone National Park, stopping often to admire the view. (I highly recommend it!) On our long drive back from Montana to Denver, we were only concerned with getting there . We had a plane to catch the next morning. We drove interstates the whole way. It should have been boring—but we almost made it very exciting. We stopped in Casper, Wyoming, for a snack, but decided not to fill up with gas. We had over a half tank, after all. . . . Well, about thirty miles out of Cheyenne, we began to wonder if we were going to make it. We turned off the air conditioning. The car grew very quiet as we held our breath.

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. –John Muir When I was a child, we had one doctor, a Family Doctor. All of us saw Dr. Moore, for everything from tendinitis to tummy aches, lacerations and vaccinations. Dr. Moore did it all, for a long time. But by the time my little brother came along, things were changing. He had a pediatrician, a doctor just for kids. And not only that—as he got older, there was an adolescent pediatrician, even more specialized. Today, it seems the specialists far outnumber the generalists. Sometimes our faith walk seems to be following a similar path. It’s not enough simply to be a Christ-follower. Are you a Baptist or a Methodist? A “dunker” or a “sprinkler”? Bread and juice? Or wafer and wine? We seem bent on particularizing God in our (very human) efforts to understand God more fully. (Did you know there are over 33,000 Protestant denominations