{Originally published in Wisdom Pursuit}

I learned a great Hebrew word in my quiet time recently- Hineni.

Hineni means “I’m ready, Lord; I’ll go if you send me; I’m listening, Lord, tell me what you would have me to know.” It is the word Abraham used when God called to him and asked him to sacrifice Isaac; it is the word Moses used as he stood before the burning bush, and it is the word that young Samuel used in the temple when he heard a voice calling to him in the night.

It’s a powerful word. A word that brought life- changing events for each of the people who spoke it. And I bet not one of them would take it back. Not one of them regrets grappling with the fear, but giving in to the will of the God who is Good, who has plans to prosper and not to harm us.

The hard part comes for those of us who are a little more seasoned in life and have seen that God’s ways are not our ways, and that our lives are not always going the way we think He should have them mapped out. His plans to prosper us and not harm us may be in the next life, and not right now. So, to conquer our fears we need an eternal perspective, a reminder that this life is but a blip on the screen of time. God sees it all, and He has a great call and plan for each of us, both in this life and the next.

Since we are but temporal creatures, our job is to be willing, just for today. We are not called to know what God has in store for us in the next life, or even next year or next week. We are called to take one step at a time to seek God’s plan and to follow it with conviction.

Wrestle with the fear, and beat it down if you must. But, if you truly seek God’s call on your life, then offer to Him these words:

{Originally Published on Conversion Diary}

When I was an atheist, Christmas was my favorite time of year.

The huge haul of top-of-the-line gifts stuffed under the tree each year (the spoils of being an only child) certainly helped my enjoyment of the season. But that actually wasn’t the most important thing to me. There was something else, something that stirred my soul more than any number of boxes wrapped with shiny paper ever could. I could never quite put my finger on what it was, but I sensed it every year when December rolled around.

There was a change that came over my family, my neighborhood, my town, and even my whole country in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Things weren’t perfect, but they were better. And better in a certain way.

Kitchens that were normally empty, only waystations for frantic parents to rush home from work in time to pick up the children for private tutoring or soccer practice or violin lessons, were suddenly filled with laughter and the smells of apple cider and baked goods. School was out, lessons and sports were on hiatus, workloads were lighter, and kids leaned on the counter and chatted with their parents as they cooked dinners from the old family recipe book.

Neighborhood folks who usually offered little more than a terse smile and a half wave opened their homes for Christmas parties, showering neighbors with the warm welcomes, relaxed conversation and even some homemade cookies.

Airports were filled with the sounds of high-pitched greetings of loved-ones who hadn’t hugged one another in months or years; highways were dotted with cars jammed with luggage and presents, families driving for hours and hours just to be in the same room with the people they loved on Christmas morning.

Workplaces normally filled with politics and stress came together to adopt families in need; miserly curmudgeons uncharacteristically slipped a couple bucks into the Salvation Army bucket; longstanding grudges were more likely to be forgiven; people seemed to spend more time thinking about others than about themselves.

When people would ask why my family loved Christmas even though we weren’t Christians, these are the images we’d point to.

We’d explain that the kindness, togetherness and love that permeated the holiday season were what made it magical for us. “You don’t have to be burdened by religious superstition to appreciate love, kindness and goodwill toward men,” the thinking went. For us, Christmas was a season of love, and that’s what we were celebrating.

What we didn’t understand, however, is that we weren’t as different from the Christians as we thought we were. We atheists celebrated peace, love and goodness; our Christian neighbors celebrated the One who is Peace, Love and Goodness itself.

{Originally Posted at Generation Cedar}

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” (John Lennon)

Is it possible, in this noisiest-of-ever-century, that we hardly ever hear, hardly ever see anything much?

Have you ever noticed your world when the power goes off? It’s not just that you can’t check your email… it’s a deafening silence that might drive some crazy if it lasted long enough. All the hums and quiet roars are dead, and we are left with much less–or is it more?

I think if we don’t live on purpose, we won’t live at all. If we don’t see through the daily whir, and hear through the daily buzz, we might just miss the life we were intended to live.

If you’ve lived very long, you know that life isn’t that long. Can we say as someone did,

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

It’s not hard, really. It’s not sky-diving and Rocky-mountain climbing…

It’s another warm hug today; choosing to cast a gentle glance in the direction of one you love, rather than a day-worn scowl.

A walk outside, closing your eyes, and raising your face to the warmth of an autumn sky. Saying out loud to your children…”Isn’t this world glorious–the one our Lord created?”

Curling up to read Dr. Seuss again, ending with a tickle. Speaking words of life into someone’s heart.

All these smallish things, woven together over a lifetime make a life well-lived.

{Originally published on “Et tu?“}

For whatever reason, I keep stumbling across blogs by mothers who are battling cancer lately.

One of the things that’s most striking about every one of them is how much looking through their posts highlights how fragile life is, and how little control we really have over our destinies. The post at the bottom of the page, from last Wednesday, might be titled something like “Feeling great!” and recount high hopes and improving health. And then the latest post, from today, might be titled “Bad news” and tell of dire test results and the choking realization that the author will probably not live to see her children grow up.

Just now I was doing my usual blog reading during the
kids’ naptime, and I came across yet another blogger who just received
a grave cancer diagnosis. She’s a mother, she’s not even 30 yet, and
there’s a good chance that she doesn’t have a lot more time.

Oddly, I was able to keep a stiff upper lip through most of the post, until she got to the part about all the plans she had: how she had her life neatly in place, her plans for the next few years all settled, and this diagnosis completely derailed everything. Nothing seems within her control any longer, and that’s one of the things she’s struggling with the most.

Originally posted on Christa Allan’s blog. “The holy goes on, no matter how many balls you fling at it.”   Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott I suppose living to the age of a highway speed limit has caused me to redefine holy. In my youth, now defined as any age a neighborhood speed limit ago, I’d define holy in strictly religious terms…you know, the Baltimore Catcheism holies. Today, I’d define it in the seemingly more commonplace…sun risings and settings, moon shadings and lightings,  gentle smiles and [...]