A gift from God himself

This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)

No day is the same when Jesus is your Lord. Life is not very monotonous when we are serving Jesus as we should. How's your 'attitude' toward your day? If you find it a bit 'prickly', stop for a moment, take a breath and consider that YOU are responsible for what you feel AND what you appreciate in your day. Look for the right stuff in your day and you are more likely to find it!

This day is a gift from God - choose to be blessed in it. Remember this: The devil will always try to make you 'like' him, his 'things', and his 'attitude' toward life. He attempts to destroy our joy, the unity we enjoy with each other, and the relationships we need. When we allow the devil to be in control of how we see the world around us, we will be robbed of so much. Focus on those with differing views from yours long enough and you will begin to 'conform' to their views or be miserable trying to defend your own!

We must be unified in our mission to be devoted followers of Jesus. With God's help, we can choose what matters most over what calls for our attention now. The devil is all about the 'now' - get it now, do it now, say it now. Become aware of what you want MOST and focus on that - not on the NOW he proffers as the answer to our every whim. Define what drives you. If it is what you can have NOW instead of what you need he MOST, you might just find your days are a bit more 'prickly' than you'd like.

Time is measured in minutes, but life is measured in moments. (Psalm 39:4-5) We must learn to make every moment count - not just the NOW. As we experience God together, we grow together. As we share the good, the bad, the beautiful and even the ugly of our days with each other, we learn from one another. Our lives are always best when we take in the 'moments' we have together. What might just make our day a little better is to stop counting the minutes in our day and start focusing on the moments that we share. Just sayin!

Let's not forget

At times we all wonder why we are traveling a particular road. We cannot put our finger on why it is we are facing the challenging, and sometimes a little treacherous road we must cross. In those moments, we wonder if we made a wrong turn somewhere, or if this is the way life is supposed to be - potholes, narrow and sometimes hair-raising switchbacks, and climbs so hard you almost peter out on the way up. I guess I face those roads a little differently than some. Instead of wondering why I am on the road, I just ask! In fact, in time I come to discover something unique about every road I have traveled - I am not traveling it alone! I may have made a wrong turn - but I still don't travel alone. I have Jesus right alongside me no matter what road I am on and this one thing I know - I cannot "bail" - the road will be traveled!

Keep and live out the entire commandment that I’m commanding you today so that you’ll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child. (Deuteronomy 8:1-5)

The toughest part of "traveling" so many roads over the course of a lifetime is the "remembering" part. I don't particularly remember the names of all the places I have travelled, but they are "imprinted" images of some of the most beautiful spots. I see things through the eyes of a photographer sometimes - capturing permanent images of a few blades of grass holding on for dear life from the side of a rocky outcropping, or maybe the mossy covering of a log settle on the shoreline of a lazily flowing creek bed. These are images I recount when I want to remember some of the beauty of my physical travels - not just in photographs, but in "photo quality memories". There are equally memorable "images" of those spiritual places I have traveled, both by taking the right turns and the wrong ones.

There are also a few traveled roads I'd like to put out of my memory - how about you? Those were the toughest roads to travel and took the biggest toll. Those roads seemed to be some of the longest journeys I have taken - and the loneliest! Maybe we all have a tendency to want to block those difficult memories - those times of traversing over those roads of regret we have traveled. I believe even the toughest roads - those riddled with potholes of regret - were never traveled alone and were not without purpose, opportunity, and learning. Israel traveled 40 years in a desert place, sometimes too caught up in themselves to recognize how long they had been traveling the same piece of ground over and over again. We can get so "inward" focused we don't realize we are traveling the same piece of ground repeatedly. It is kind of like not being able to see the tree right in front of us because there is a forest so vast and dense all around us. When we immerse ourselves in the misery of the moment, we cannot see the exit which may be our ultimate deliverance.

Keep in mind what God says - don't forget even one step of the journey! None of those steps were without purpose. In those times of our toughest challenges, God was showing himself strong on our behalf, allowing us to see a little bit of where our focus was too much "me", "me", "me", and maybe even giving us a little taste of what heaven was like in the end. We will remember the "heaven" part, but we have a tendency to forget the parts in-between! Those times when we were pushed to our limits - seemingly tested to the point of breaking - those are the times we want to put behind us, walk away from, and never turn back. I believe there is value in remembering the lessons of the journey - capturing even "snip-its" of the moments where we came face-to-face with either ourselves or God (hopefully both).

Those journeys were the very opportunities God used to show us exactly what we are made of and what he wants to do and be. In recognizing what our "make-up" is, we can take heart in knowing God "makes-up" for what we lack. In learning how he comes to our rescue each and every time we call, we come to appreciate his ever-present guidance in our lives. In discovering the depth of our need, we also discover the depth of his love and mercy. These are indeed "worthy" memories of the journeys we might want to "put behind". Just sayin!

Carpe Diem

It was the poet Virgil that reminded us, "Time passes irrevocably", so we had best make the most out of the moments we are given. "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-3) What moments have you let pass you by? Maybe it is 'time' to invest in the moments - the hour could just be later than we think.

Moments can pass us by, or we can appreciate the value in each one and make the most of them. The blind beggar sitting along the Jericho roadside likely went there every day with the express purpose of getting a few coins or a parcel of food that might help him to have his needs met. Do you think he imagined that he'd hear that it was Jesus traveling that route one day, and that by calling out to Jesus that he'd actually walk home that evening seeing perfectly? (Luke18) He heard, but he didn't see. He trusted in what he had heard, and he believed. He asked, and he received. In a moment his life was changed.

Do we think it was by accident that the young shepherd boy named David was taking lunch to his elder brothers at the front line of battle at the point the battle was about to be lost? Can we say it was coincidence that David would be there are the moment Goliath the Giant challenged the Israelite army? That was a moment - a time of decision for David. A time to reveal his trust in the Almighty God of Israel and the power of one tiny stone carefully picked from the riverbed. The giant taunted, but David stepped forward - in a moment all the taunting ended and the battle was won - not by the giant, but by the one tiny stone in the hand of one faith-filled boy. (I Samuel 17)

What moments has God prepared for you? Moments that will increase your faith, fill your heart, and heal your mind, body, and soul. We might think we will get another, but we must never forget who prepares the moments. God places us right where we are, in just the exact circumstances we are in, with just the right amount of faith to face the moment. You and I need to learn to 'read the moment' and then seize it. So, Carpe Diem! Just sayin!

I am feeling rather 'dry' right now

If you have ever felt like your life is 'dry ground', you are not alone. There are seasons we all go through that feel a little 'dryer' than we'd like. It seems as though there is nothing getting through to God and he is not getting through to us. Dryness could have a few causes, but in general it is just part of life. Yes, compromise and sin can create a dryness, but if you think of the variation in the seasons of nature, you observe there are times when it is just going to be 'dry' - a season where growth appears to be stunted and a little less likely to occur. If we are truthful in our observations of these dry seasons in our lives, we'd likely admit there is much happening just beneath the surface, getting us ready for the next 'growth spurt' we are likely to experience.

The Lord is making roads through the sea. He is making a path for his people, even through rough waters. The Lord says, So don’t remember what happened in earlier times. Don’t think about what happened a long time ago, because I am doing something new! Now you will grow like a new plant. Surely you know this is true. I will even make a road in the desert, and rivers will flow through that dry land. (Isaiah 43:16, 18-19 ERV)

One of the typical things we humans do is 'recount memories'. We have a way of trapping inside our minds what we observed, thought, felt, and experienced in some way, don't we? We form 'memory slots' for these things, much like on a hard drive in the computer we use daily. These 'memory slots' can be useful to protect us from things that can harm us - such as when we touch something hot and then determine never to do that again. They can also be kind of limiting if we trust them more than we trust God when he asks us to move beyond whatever 'memory' we have allowed to hold us tightly in place for a while.

As we see from our passage today, God is in the business of making paths for his people - even through the rough places we don't want to travel through. The way through the rough places isn't to curl up in a ball and hope they pass soon. The 'way through' is to let go of what 'happened in earlier times'. In other words, let go of the memories we have stored away in those 'memory slots' that just hold us back - making us feel all dried up and ineffective in this life. Don't remember what happened in earlier times - it isn't a warning or a suggestion - it is a commandment to trust there is something new coming forth in you!

God is doing something new - maybe building upon what we have formed as memories of past times, but not necessarily. Desert places don't have to be dry places - they can be places of purging. As winds blow across the desert, picking up bits and pieces of discarded leaves, exposing seeds hidden just beneath the surface of the dry earth, opening up the desert floor to new growth, so God's Spirit sweeps across our lives in these dry times. Seasons of dryness are not seasons of dead-ness. They are seasons of promised new growth. Never let go of this promise and be cognizant of God's movement in your life. He isn't going to leave you there forever - there are new rivers about to burst forth. Just sayin!

More than a moment

It was Dr. Seuss who said, "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." We pretty much like how things begin, but we often feel let down when they end. I know that is the way I approach vacation times - happy that the day has arrived to embark on my adventure; then the final day comes and I must begin the journey back to "normal". Some projects begin the same way - with great gusto and good cheer; then end with a few bumps and bruises, tired muscles, and a sense of a little let down to be completing it. I wonder if we approach some of the moments in our lives with Christ in much this same manner - seeing a closed door behind us as something to mourn rather than to smile about 'because it happened". There will be bumps and bruises along the way sometimes, but remember...we grow by falling and getting up again!

Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should. (Psalm 90:12 TLB)

Our days are few - we must make the best of each one. Life doesn't just 'happen' - we aren't just abandoned to whatever happens without any apparent reason. Even those things that seem to escape reason have a purpose; although that purpose may not be understood some times. The other day I took my daughter to the airport for one of the first flights of the day. It was an early flight, so we anticipated being at the airport about one hour early would be sufficient. We judged leaving 1.5 hours before the flight would allow the 30 minutes travel time and enough time for her to take her time to get to the gate. Well, you guessed it - - - there was a huge traffic issue on the freeway and we were caught in the middle of the muddle. We sat on a two mile stretch of the journey (our last leg of it, mind you) for an hour waiting for traffic to clear from a huge roll-over accident at the specific exit we needed in order to get to the airport. In fact, we were trapped with no way of escape, for there were no other exits. 

Sometimes we feel trapped by what our days bring to us, much like we did in that traffic jam. The minutes just ticked by, the flight came closer and closer to take-off time, and my daughter's peers all sat at the gate awaiting her arrival so they could begin their journey that day. The truth of the matter is that she arrived at the door of the airport 18 minutes before her flight, somehow made it past TSA security checkpoint, and to the door of that flight just as they paged her name for the last time! But...the lesson of the adventure is not the ending, but rather the beginning of this journey. You see, as she loaded her stuff into the car, I was ready to pull out and go, but she needed to talk for a moment with her husband, delaying our start that day by just a few minutes. The cats stood ready at the open door contemplating an escape, and she needed to remind him to herd them back into the house just in case they scurried under her parked car without him noticing.

That simple delay seemed like an eternity as we sat on that traffic clogged section of freeway that day, but 5 minutes earlier might just have placed us in the very spot where that out of control driver created such a mess and sent innocent people to the hospital that day. As we waiting for what seemed an eternity, I knew we were being taught a lesson. The lesson? God holds our lives securely in his hands. As traffic began to clear, we all began to move - picking up the speed as separation between vehicles began to increase. As my speedometer approached 45 mph, we were suddenly cut off from a vehicle to the left of us, crossing two lanes of traffic, cutting across the gore point into oncoming traffic exiting the freeway, and we were run off the road, narrowly avoiding a collision of our own. In a blink of an eye, our vehicle veered off the road, avoiding all other traffic around us, and we were kept safe from what could have proven to be the permanent delay in my daughter's adventure that day.

Sometimes we set out with one thing in mind, but come to the realization the journey will yield something quite different. We saw miracles that day - both in our own lives and in those lives around us. We saw provision that day - both in delivering us safely to our destination and in allowing that flight to be delayed ever so slightly for air conditioning repairs! In those moments, stress levels rose to high proportions, but in equal proportions God's peace overshadowed us. I simply turned to my daughter and spoke with the peaceful assurance of God's control of the matter and said, "You are going to make your flight." We started well, but I think we ended better. We might have wanted to cry with the let down of it all being over and her being safely on her way, but we smiled in the peace of knowing God's hand was clearly in each moment of that early morning's adventure. Maybe you are there today - feeling a little let down at the end of your adventure - don't look back and mourn, but smile with the assurance of having experienced the teachable moments! Just sayin!

A grace-filled touch

Cesare Pavese said, "We do not remember days, we remember moments." There are lots and lots of moments in my lifetime that come flooding into my thought on occasion, some bringing warm feelings of pleasure and others causing just a little bit of pain as a little bit of the memory of an old wound is recounted. I had one such unpleasant memory on my recent trip with my BFF while we were just sharing a little of ourselves. What struck me the most is that she sensed my intensely deep pain as she reached out and just simply touched my arm, and in an instant, without one word from her, the pain dissipated. God has a way of helping us even when we don't recognize we need that help, my friends. In any moment, we never know when a moment remembered can become a time of healing - no words necessary, just the touch of grace.

Praise the Lord! I thank the Lord with all my heart in the assembly of his good people. The Lord does wonderful things, more than anyone could ask for. The things he does are great and glorious! There is no end to his goodness. He does amazing things so that we will remember that the Lord is kind and merciful. (Psalm 111:1-4 ERV)

God's greatness isn't always displayed in big ways. We think Charlton Heston and the Ten Commandments parting of the water kind of moments are those we will remember the most, but it can be the simplest of touches that brings the greatest of memories. The acts of God don't have to be catastrophic to be memorable! There are moments when we don't expect anything to happen, and we are caught off-guard by the greatness of God. There are other moments we look for the big "event" to reveal some majestic thing about God's grace and goodness, only to sense nothing more than his faithful presence with us as we go through them.

Moments define our past more than days. Moments define our present more than any accumulation of days. It is the accumulated moments that make up the memories we will take away. It can also be those moments that we commit to memory that can define us even when we don't want them to give us that particular definition. It sometimes becomes imperative to let go of some moments in order to allow the memories of those moments to no longer be our defining moments, though. The moments we want to define our lives are "grace moments" - those moments in time when God reaches in and just touches us where we most need a touch.

We may not always know which moments have defined us, but in God's faithfulness, he reveals those worth adding to our defined character and those which we should just let go of in order to no longer allow them to hold us bound to that definition any longer. When we have those "grace moments", we need to commit them to memory, recount them often, and allow the newness of their strength to envelope our lives. Just sayin!

Be careful how you live...

Lyndon B. Johnson said, "Yesterday is not ours to recover..."  He is so right - once time has passed us by, it is but a fleeting memory.  We can try as we might to "reconstruct" it through recall and emotion, but it is gone now and nothing more than a memory.  The rest of what he said was also quite profound:  "Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose."  If the yesterday moments are already lost, then we had best be paying attention to the present so we don't lose those opportunities, as well.  I think he may have overstepped the boundaries of man in his words here, because our tomorrow is never assured.  If we are granted the breath and strength to take on our "tomorrow", then we had best determine today if we will embrace it with all we've got, or settle on more lost moments.

So be careful how you live; be mindful of your steps. Don’t run around like idiots as the rest of the world does. Instead, walk as the wise! Make the most of every living and breathing moment because these are evil times.  So understand and be confident in God’s will, and don’t live thoughtlessly.  (Ephesians 5:15-17 VOICE)

Mindfulness indicates carefulness, awareness, and attentiveness.  Three traits we'd do well to develop in order to appreciate the moments we are given.  When we are attentive, we don't miss things - even when they are subtle.  We pick up on the nuances of others, the mood of the moment, the underlying current of the situation.  When we are aware, our senses are "tuned up" and we are listening, seeing, sensing with "all cylinders".  If we focus on taking great care in all circumstances, we are less likely to take missteps, fall into traps unnoticed, or lay hold of things which will eventually burn their way into leaving large scars in our lives. 

We are responsible for the care we direct toward our day.  If we have no plans, we can see time drift away without us being cognizant of the dwindling away of those hours.  If we make too many plans, we can become overly stressed and too keyed up to enjoy the moments we are taking part in.  It looks as though we are present in the moment, but when we are so overly stressed, we are already moving on in our minds to the next thing we have to accomplish.  We miss out when we live too far in the future, or don't focus on the present that is passing us by.  

As our passage states, we need to understand and be confident in God's will - the means to developing this understanding and confidence being the discovery of that will through his Word, time in thoughtful prayer, and attentive listening to the niggling of his Spirit within. Without this discovery and understanding, we make thoughtless decisions and are not invested in the stuff which really will matter in the long run.  Sometimes we share the moments with others, drawing support and comfort as we make our way though.  At others, we find solace in the presence of God and just nuzzle up close to him as we go through those moments.  

It doesn't always have to be that we share all our moments with others - some of the most profound can be those we walk through with God, in the place of solitary communion with him.  Others may not understand the place of solitary communion, though.  They can see it as being unwilling to share what you are going through, or being too "stuck up" or "self- assured" that you don't need or care about others and/or their help.  It may not be easy to navigate through either one of these circumstances - being the center of attention, or being in quiet reflection. To others, it may seem you are aloof at times, too demanding of attention at others.  It may even seem you don't care to allow others to get to know the real you. 

As we walk through our moments, we always need to be cognizant that others are walking through theirs, as well.  Sometimes one will take precedent over the other, but always know this - none of these moments escape God's care, his provision, and his protection.  All moments are covered in his grace and love when we first seek to put him in the center of all we do.  Just sayin.

Moments or Monuments?

There is an old saying:  Something crooked cannot be made straight, and something missing cannot be counted.  (Ecclesiastes 1:15 VOICE)  

Corrie Ten Boom said, "Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future."  There is a song entitled "Dear Younger Me" by MercyMe.  The song begins, "Dear younger me, where do I start; if I could tell you everything I have learned so far, then you'd be one step ahead..." Boy, isn't that the desire of every parent?  To somehow share with our children the things we have learned in the "school of hard knocks" and repeated "recesses of rebellion".  Those memories don't have to haunt us - for they can be, as Corrie said, the key to different steps in the future. Those "different" steps may bespeak of deeper faith, a more solid trust in someone other than yourself, or a greater understanding of how to avoid the pitfalls that come our way.  If I had to tell parents these days one word of advice, I'd probably say something like:  "Make the moments, not the monuments".

I don't remember the ranks to which my father rose in any of his jobs.  I remember the days by the creek, catching fish, enjoying nature.  I remember the long Sunday afternoon drives and the time he let me take a starfish home from the tide pools along the beaches in Southern California.  I remember the card games on summer nights, with good friends gathered around the table after supper, and all the laughter as the night went on.  So many parents today are so busy with the pursuit of career or aspirations of some type they miss the whole connection of the moments which are passing them by quicker than they realize. We can get so caught up in the monuments we are attempting to build in this world that we just plain miss the moments!

As Solomon discovered, you cannot make the crooked straight - once it has been made crooked, it is a much harder task to make it straight again.  Don't believe me?  Crumple up a piece of paper and see how "straight" or "flat" you can make it again.  In the end, it may resemble the former state of "straightness" or "evenness" it once had, but it takes a great deal of effort to get it that way again.  The moment to admire and utilize the evenness of that paper is gone!  It passed us by.  Now we are left with the crumpled paper - useful still, but not as it was originally designed or intended.  He also mused, "Something missed cannot be counted" - a lesson we'd all do well to learn.

After all is said and done, memories remain.  We can dwell in them, sometimes even too much so, but we cannot recreate them.  They are "past" - as such, they are something we can hold onto, use as an assessment of what was "good" or "bad" in that moment, and then identify how that moment can become the catalyst for a new "moment" today which becomes a new memory.  We can focus on the monument, getting our eyes off the moments which are passing us by, but we won't have as rich of a storehouse to take into those monuments as we might like.  Just sayin!