Hypothetical question. Let’s say someone asked you to help an impoverished family this holiday season. Who would you help first?
Maybe this feels a little tricky.
Maybe like me, your house isn’t really all that close to people who need help.
Hypothetical question. Let’s say someone asked you to help an impoverished family this holiday season. Who would you help first?
Maybe this feels a little tricky.
Maybe like me, your house isn’t really all that close to people who need help.
Those of you who are married: Remember that moment where you piled all those fluffy white layers into the car with tin cans clanking on the back? Or maybe you loosened your tie and pressed on the gas with those rented shoes, rose petals or rice or birdseed flying off the back.
There was something about finally closing the door, muting the noise, and looking at each other: Finally. After all of that craziness, we are married.
It was a little weird. Like, is that it? Stood up at the church, shook a bunch of hands at the reception, and now…my identity is different?
Most of the things we need to be most fully alive never come in busyness. They grow in rest.
Mindset of the man too busy: I am too busy being God to become like God.
Mark Buchanan, The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God
Switching out what’s on my fridge is a lazy easy way to continue to help my kids meditate on Scripture without even knowing it. And let’s face it; I feel really dumb when I refer to the “4:29 Rule” when my kids’ mouths need some work, and they look at me like they have no idea what I’m talking about (see poster #1). Here’s to Friday for all of us who could use a low-ball.
Sometimes it can feel a little like my schedule has me on a leash, rather than the other way around. During the school year, when asked how we are, how many times could we answer, “Busy”?
But, as I like to be reminded by Peter Scazzero, we’re human beings, not human doings. We are more than what we do, more than our usefulness, like some machine or hired hand.
I know, I know–this may seem a little off the beaten path for this blog. But I’ve been thinking more about simplicity lately (see my ideas for real families to teach kids this spiritual discipline here). I’ve written a little about simplicity as a fast for your house, too. But the rubber meets the road in my closet. I enjoy creativity with clothing and color; it’s fun for me. And I’m pretty good at scouting killer deals.
And no one looks in my closet.
So it’s a little to easy for me to collect in there.
Do you remember the first time you wondered if God really was good?
I can’t say I remember the first. But I have to admit to you that it’s a constant decision of mine: to choose truth and trust. It was Eve’s issue too, right? Questioning the purity of God’s motives; her created brain and heart tossing around the idea that maybe he’s the one who’s lying.
This year you’ve read as I’ve wrestled with God here and there. Like Jacob, it’s left parts of me dislocated now and again. But there is too much evidence that he is who he says. And honestly, there are too many parts of me that are false and undeveloped and limited in sight: Let God be true and every man a liar (Romans 3:4).
We were on our way to the local aquatic center with friends in my trusty, dented little Subaru. We passed a few yard signs for our small town’s upcoming election. I was listening to my 10-year-old chat with her friends about how excited they were about summer’s approach. Of course, right? But get this. “Yeah, I can’t wait for summer, with all this election stuff and the school shootings.”
Well. Is that how you know that your daughter is growing up in a different world?
I eventually talked with her about the local election: That despite she and her siblings’ wide-eyed ingestion of the scrolling newsfeed in 2016, elections are not usually scary things in our country. (This was less so in Africa, where she grew up, so I get that, too.)
As we prepare to celebrate Good Friday, I’m marveling at these paradoxes bound up in Jesus’ death: all we gained through his loss. Hope it increases your overwhelming adoration like it does mine. (PRINT IT HERE, and feel free to share if you like it.)
Who believes what we’ve heard and seen?
Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?
Isaiah 53:1, MSG
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