Lord, teach me. . . .

  There is no one who is insignificant in the purpose of God.  –Alistair Begg   We spend a lot of time talking and wondering about what (or who) God is. In Exodus, for example, God’s own self tells us: The L ORD, the L ORD , compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness; maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness and sin.   But have you ever stopped to recognize and ponder what God is not ? This can be a tough place to wander. After all, from the time we are little, we learn that God is everything . So how can God not be something? John’s epistle, for example, tells us the in God there is no darkness at all; yet within the darkness, we can find God. So to avoid the darkness limits our relationship with God. Confused? Here are some other things God is not :  God is not One who kills children through war, disease or famine. God is not a God of hatred and destruction. Or neglect. Or poverty. Or annihilation....

  Deadlines aren’t bad. They help you organize your time. They help you set priorities. They make you get going when you might not feel like it. –Harvey Mackay   How full is your plate right now? How many things do you absolutely have to get done before bedtime/ tomorrow/ next week?  And how much of that stuff is life-or-death important? Some people don’t feel like they’re doing their job if they’re not really, really busy. All the time. The longer the list, the more successful the world thinks we are. The more we check off, the better we (ought to) sleep at night. Life is short. None of us knows how many days we have left, how many beats our heart will offer before giving out. All those lists of Stuff To Do become pretty irrelevant in light of our own mortality. So what really matters? Here’s what I think: What really matters is how well we have loved. Not how many hands we have shaken or how many books we have read or written. How many people, at the end...

  A seminary student asked to shadow me for two days to see what my life as a pastor was like. At the end, he said, “Oh, my gosh, you’re basically a person for a living.” –Nadia Bolz-Weber   Like so very many professions, people don’t really have much of a handle on what it means to be a pastor. There are still some who think we only work one day a week . . . but not much anymore. I think the reason you might not understand what we do is because, at least sometimes, we don’t understand what we do. Many pastors will tell you: I never, ever saw myself going to seminary or pastoring a church . What was God thinking? Put my name on that list. Some days, I still feel clueless as to how I got here—and yet. And yet the “fit” of my flock and my Call is undeniable. The visible aspects of ministry, beyond Sunday morning worship, are clearly baptisms, marriages and funerals, all those touch points in life where one’s soul is experiencing something but you may not be sure ...

  I have abandoned all particular forms of devotion, all prayer techniques. My only prayer practice is attention. I carry on a habitual, silent and secret conversation with God that fills me with overwhelming joy. –Brother Lawrence   Brother Lawrence was a 17 th century monk whose tiny little book, Practicing the Presence of God , is at once simple and complex. It can also be a life-changing read. Lawrence’s technique, on the surface, seems obvious and simple. He would suggest that instead of trying to “make time for God” in our busy lives (yes, even the 17 th century was busy), simply work at constantly allowing God to be present in your life. Brother Lawrence’s calling was to serve. That meant, in his case, meals, among other things. He would spend hours each day in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and doing dishes. In those ordinary, everyday activities, he would carry on quiet conversations with the Divine, both speaking and listening. He found his heart being draw...

Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday. –Napoleon Hill I’m not usually too bad about procrastinating. I usually putter around a bit, but with the understanding that while I putter, I am organizing my To Do List of the mind. Yeah, that’s it. As we prepare for a vacation, for instance, I know we’ll need to pack stuff. I know we need one last trip to the grocery store for road food. (When the kids were little, we always took along a bag of suckies [hard candies] and chewies [soft candies]. That way, no one complained.) And yes, I know eventually, we will need to give the house one last cleaning. I really don’t like coming home to a dirty house. But for now . . . I am content to do just about anything else. I have one more sermon to craft—but before I start that . . . and then, suddenly, it’s Friday. But along the way of my doing other things, I have made time for a walk. And I saw baby bi...

  Prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God. –Saint Teresa of Avila   As if the pandemic weren’t challenging enough . . . on top of everything else, the United States Postal Service was also adding to the challenges of everyday life. Mailboxes in neighborhoods were removed. Letters and packages were delayed. Local post offices, in some cases, had reduced staffing as some folks retired but weren’t replaced. Suddenly, mailing a letter might take three days instead of one day. Packages headed for Colorado or Montana suddenly weren’t guaranteed to arrive by the necessary date—even at Christmas! It’s been frustrating, to say the least. Then I had an epiphany. Our postal service has become a microcosm of God’s kingdom way when it comes to answering our prayers. Sometimes, we pray earnestly, and it seems as if almost immediately there is an answer. Even some of those strange prayers, ones that we offered in quivering, uncertain voices, seem to be o...

  If you go around being afraid, you’re never going to enjoy life. You have only one chance, so you’ve got to have fun. –Lindsey Vonn   When I was around 9 or 10 years old, our summer vacation took us to Hovenweep National Monument. Hovenweep sits in the Four Corners area, with tentacles in both Colorado and Utah. The monument celebrates the history of over twenty-five ancient peoples who dwelt in this hot, dry land, over 10,000 years ago. It’s unlike anywhere else. There is a very primitive campground there, and we had our tent to pitch. Problem was, the ground was so hard and so dry, Dad couldn’t drive the stakes in as well as he would have liked. So he set the tent up, and we unrolled the sleeping bags, crawled in and used our body weight to hold it down. Then the winds came . . . and the rains. . . . It was a long, scary night, but joy did, indeed, come in the morning. The sun came up, just like every other day. We survived, obviously. But even while we knew ,...