When you’re overwhelmed with grief or stress, pause and take time to read (or sing) these words. Also, look up the back story to this timeless classic whenever you get the chance.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been six years with this furry little tortie in my life. I guess time flies when you have a fun cat, or a cat who likes flies. It seems like yesterday that she picked me to be her furrever human. I’d like to say I chose her, but we all know it was the other way around.

On June 30, 2017, I went to the Williamson County Animal Shelter with the intent of taking home a cat, not to replace Lucy, the cat I had lost nine days earlier, but to be an outlet for all the love I still had for Lucy that had nowhere to go.

I’ve never once regretted going to a shelter for my cat. I’m all for breeders and purebreed animals, but there’s something extra special about rescued pets. They just seem to love you more somehow. Plus, you don’t need to sell a kidney to be able to afford one.

I brought home a tiny tortie with one peanut butter foot all those years ago and have been blessed with six years of joy from one very grateful feline. God willing, here’s to many more years with little Peanut!

“Lord, all that I long for is known to you,
my sighing is no secret from you…
I put my trust in you, and leave you to answer for me” (Elisabeth Elliott).

Isn’t that a beautiful image? That even our sighs and groans that go too deep for words rise as evening incense to God with all our other prayers? That the Holy Spirit takes the wordless moans and aches and translates them to God’s ear?

In those times when we go before the Throne unable to articulate our need or express our longing, God knows it already. You and I can rest in the knowledge that the answer is given even before the question has been asked or even thought of.

You are in good hands. You are in God’s hands.

I’m sure I read William Wordsworth back in high school. I might have even had to memorize a poem or two. But to read these lines is to realize the beauty of well-chosen words that tell a story but are also lovely in and of themselves:

“And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish’d one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears” (William Wordsworth).

I’ve heard people lately say something along the lines of “I follow Jesus, not the Bible.”

Here’s the problem with that. First of all, everything we know of Jesus comes from the Bible. Every prophecy, every quotation, every event comes straight from Scripture. You can’t know Jesus apart from His revelation in the Bible, specifically the Gospels.

Also, Jesus held the Bible in very high regard. He said that not the smallest letter nor “the smallest stroke of a pen” would pass away until everything was accomplished and fulfilled (Matthew 5:18). Jesus said that all the law and prophets, i.e. the entire Bible up to the point of Jesus, testified about Him.

When you divorce Jesus from the Bible, you end up with a slightly smarter, slightly stronger version of you. This Jesus votes like you, thinks like you, believes like you do . . . it’s essentially you creating God in the flesh in your own image rather than the reverse.

Jesus did say that anyone who was thirsty could come and drink, but He also said that those who want to be His disciples must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Him. Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery that He didn’t condemn her, but He also told her to go and sin no more. It’s not an either/or, but a both/and.

The Jesus as revealed in the Bible is the only one who can save us. He’s the only one who has shown us God the Father. He’s the only one who can truly be our Prince of peace and give us true peace, true hope, and true life. He’s the one who died for me and rose again that I might not just be made right with God, but be made right with God for all eternity.

That’s not far off from what my morning commute feels like sometimes. And it’s not just I-24. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter what route I take, because I will most likely end up staring at the tail lights of the car in front of me.

Thankfully, I have Audible. Yes, that is a shameless plug, but it’s also the truth. If I didn’t have audio books or some kind of music, I’d lose what little I have left of my ever-loving mind. I’d lose my religion (as we say in the South) in a heartbeat.

I think traffic is just another of God’s reminders that I am not in control. As much as I want to plan my day and have it always go my way, slow traffic reminds me that I can’t and it won’t.

Basically, traffic keeps me humble. That and my hair on a particularly hot and humid day. But that’s another story for another (and hopefully cooler) day.

“Father, our source of life,
You know our weakness.
May we reach out with joy to grasp your hand
and walk more readily in your ways.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever” (from The Liturgy of the Hours).

God knows who we are. He knows that we are weak and prone to temptation. He knows that the flesh is willing but the spirit is not always up to the task. He knew we could never make our way to Him, so He took on flesh and came down to us.

God knows that a lot of us are facing a week we would rather not face. For some, it’s just stressful work stuff. For some, it’s facing hard decisions about a loved one’s deteriorating health. For some, it’s just a choice between one rock and one hard place with neither being good choices.

But God is faithful. He will be with us, no matter how dark and narrow the path gets. He’s gone before us and will go with us through all of it. And once we are on the other side, we will have the chance to help those who are going through what we went through.

Lord, help us to remember that no matter what, you are enough. You have promised to never leave nor forsake us, even in the midst of hardships and turmoil. Help us keep our eyes on You, not our circumstances, and help us see the joy that lies on the other side. Amen.

I know a little about knots in my mind, my heart, and my life (although for me they tend to end up in my gut). I know what it’s like to be kept awake at night by thoughts that will not lie down. It’s like a never-ending upset stomach.

But I also know the Prince of Peace. I know He said to cast my cares on Him. I know He said to take up His yoke because it is light and easy to carry. I know He said to seek first His kingdom and everything else would work itself out.

I sometimes forget and think that I have to be enough and do enough and say enough to make everything right and good in my world. But Jesus said that He is enough, and my job is simply to trust Him with the future and simply to obey and take the next step in faith.

The words to the old hymn still apply: trust and obey, for there’s no other way. Just trust and obey.

Tonight, I went to an incredible concert at Schermerhorn Symphony Center with Richard Marx, thanks to a very generous neighbor. It was great to hear all the old songs, along with a few newer ones, that took me back to my high school days and awakened all sorts of feelings and memories within me.

One song in particular brought back vivid memories of a band trip to Oklahoma and a girl I had a major crush on as a freshman. I remember buying the cassette tape and wearing it out in my Sony Walkman back in 1988. I even persuaded the girl to listen to that song.

I never could bring myself to let the girl know my feelings for her. I’m pretty sure she’s married now with kids and possibly grandkids. But that song still takes me back. I can almost smell the hotel rooms and swimming pool and the diesel exhaust from the band bus.

I love how music over and above any other form of art can act as a kind of time machine to take you to a tangible moment in your life where you go back to the exact feelings and memories you had then. The song becomes a part of the soundtrack to your life and the memory becomes etched in your heart and in your mind forever.

“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word ‘love’, and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. ‘Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created’ [Revelation 4:11]. We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well pleased’. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities—no more than the beggar maid could wish that King Cophetua should be content with her rags and dirt, or a dog, once having learned to love man, could wish that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping, verminous, polluting creature of the wild pack. What we would here and now call our ‘happiness’ is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy” (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain).

I think George MacDonald said that the love of God is like a refiner’s fire that takes gold and burns away any impurities in it until the refiner can see his face in it. In the same way, God in His love refines us, burning away anything that is not of Him until He can see His face in us and until we look like Him.

It is true that Jesus loves us as we are, but He does not leave us that way. He meets us where we are, but doesn’t leave us there. He makes us lovable and loving, so we can both love God and others in the same way He has loved us. It is a holy love.