Garrison Keillor once joked that cats are proof that not everything God created has a purpose. I tend to think they do.

Cats basically exist to look cute and to sleep a lot. And by a lot, I mean A LOT. Like for cats, consciousness is that annoying time between naps. Being awake for a cat is a chore, which is why they try not to be awake if they can help it.

Peanut is no exception. She follows the typical feline beauty regimen of at least 23 hours of sleep a day. I admit that I get a bit jealous when she can fall asleep at any given moment in any given position. While I can be known to toss and turn, she can literally curl up and be snoozing inside of 10 seconds without fail.

But she does like to be around me a lot. And she does sleep in my lap. Plus, she looks awfully cute when she’s sleeping. So I think I’ll give her a pass.

“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13, NIV).

Faith is trusting in God’s character over and above your circumstances. It’s trusting in His heart over your history. It’s clinging to the promises of God over the particulars of your surroundings. It’s remembering all the times God has been faithful in the past to know He will be faithful again.

To be fair, it’s still summer. I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but in Tennessee, we expect summer to last at least through the end of September. The calendar says that September 22 is the first official day of fall, but round here summer is like the houseguest who won’t leave. Summer starts saying goodbye and getting ready to leave around the middle of September, but in the South you have to say goodbye at least 3 times and be “fixing to get ready” to leave for at least 30 minutes before you leave. All that to say that fall doesn’t really start here until sometime in October (or when we can finally get summer out the door and down the driveway).

But I’m ready for cooler weather. I’m ready for all the changing leaves and crisp breezes. I’m even ready for all things pumpkin spice. Most of all, I’m ready to not sweat through all my clothes every time I step outside for longer than 5 minutes. I’m ready to not feel like I’m having a heatstroke every time I mow the lawn.

To those who are sad because you love summer, tough. You have had at least 4 months of summer. You got all your hot humid weather to tide you over for a while. Let us fall lovers have our moment and enjoy our kind of weather. We put up with all the sweaty stinkiness from ourselves and from others. We’ve earned the right to be able to wear flannel and sit around bonfires and to partake of hot chocolate and hot apple cider.

Only 17 more days to go . . .

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again” (John 3:16-17, The Message).

Sometimes, it’s easy to lose focus and get caught up in the chaos. It’s easy to forget the promises of God when panic mode sets in. It’s easy to take your eyes off Jesus and focus on the wind and waves that keep buffeting and crashing into you. That’s when you start sinking.

When your life doesn’t make sense, trust the process. Better yet, trust God in the process. He still knows what He’s doing when you don’t know what you’re doing and can’t see what He’s up to. It’s like the old saying that you don’t jump off a train when it goes through a dark tunnel. You stay on board and trust the conductor. Don’t bail on God when your life gets dark. Keep praying and trusting that even when you can’t see God, He still sees you.

“If the first and lowest operation of pain shatters the illusion that all is well, the second shatters the illusion that what we have, whether good or bad in itself, is our own and enough for us. Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We ‘have all we want’ is a terrible saying when ‘all’ does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St Augustine says somewhere, ‘God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there’s nowhere for Him to put it.’ Or as a friend of mine said, ‘We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.’ Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as he leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call ‘our own life’ remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make ‘our own life’ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness?” (C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain).

I think I get it. If God gave me absolutely everything I wanted and asked for, if God gave me all the comforts and toys I craved, then I would never seek Him. I would have no reason to seek God. Sadly, many times God is like the AAA that I never think about until I’m stranded on the side of the road.

I think God allows me to go through hardships, trials, pain, and suffering to remind me of my insufficiency and my dependence on God. It’s to keep me from thinking that this life is as good as it gets and is all there is. Otherwise, I’d never look beyond my own understanding and my own provisions.

Even minor inconveniences can be a way of opening my eyes to see beyond myself to the hurt of others and to God at work. I only have to be willing to see. Sometimes, it takes more, like car trouble or job stress or physical pain to get my attention.

But thankfully God is faithful even when I’m not. He’s working in me and around me even when I can’t (or won’t) see it. He’s not as prone to quit as I am and will finish what He started in me. He’s that good.

“If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realize that it’s what we’re starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it” (Frederick Buechner).

The Kingdom of God isn’t so much a place as it is a person. It’s the now and not yet. It’s everything we’ve longed for but couldn’t name, all the prayer requests that went unspoken, every dream that remains unfulfilled.

It’s the field that contains a treasure great enough to make us sell everything to buy it. It’s the pearl beyond price that we’ll go into debt to obtain. It’s the lost coin located, the lost sheep found, and the prodigal coming home. It is nothing less that God breaking into our every day reality and turning it upside down (or finally turning it right side up again).

If we seek this kingdom, we get it and so much more.

“Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met” (Matthew 6:33, The Message).

I think I just became a fan of the German language. I can’t speak a word of it, but any language that perfectly expresses how I exist in the morning gets rave reviews from me.

I am most assuredly not a morning person. More accurately, I am not a good waking-up person. Once I’m up and about and have a few gallons of coffee in me, I’m mostly sociable and normal and somewhat human. I can even sometimes speak complete sentences.

I used to be a night owl, but the older I get the more I feel like 10 pm is my new midnight. Whenever I try hanging out with 20somethings that really do stay out until midnight, the result isn’t pretty. But I can rock 5:30-5:45 pm like nobody’s business.

PS I really do look like the above picture in the morning. I’m fairly certain that I make that face every day before 7 am. It’s not pretty, folks.

O my Lord,
Forgive me for serving thee in sinful ways –
by glorying in my own strength,
by forcing myself to minister through
necessity,
by accepting the applause of others,
by trusting in assumed grace
and spiritual affection,
by a faith that rests upon my hold on Christ,
not on him alone,
by having another foundation to stand upon
beside thee;
for thus I make flesh my arm.
Help me to see
that it is faith stirred by grace that does the deed,
that faith brings a man nearer to thee,
raising him above mere man,
that thou dost act upon the soul
when thus elevated and lifted out of itself,
that faith centres in thee as God all-sufficient,
Father, Son, Holy Spirit,
as God efficient,
mediately, as in thy commands and promises,
immediately, in all the hidden power
that faith sees and knows to be in thee,
abundantly, with omnipotent effect,
in the revelation of thy will.
If I have not such faith I am nothing.
It is my duty to set thee above all others
in mind and eye;
But it is my sin that I place myself above thee.
Lord, it is the special evil of sin
that every breach of thy law arises
from contempt of thy Person,
from despising thee and thy glory,
from preferring things before thee.
Help me to abhor myself in comparison of thee,
And keep me in a faith that works by love,
and serves by grace.

“O Word Made Flesh, stand guard at the gate of my mouth. Be my voice this day that the words I speak will be healing, affirming, true and gentle. Give me wisdom to think before I speak. Bless the words in me that are waiting to be spoken. Live and abide in my words so that others will feel safe in my presence. Place my words in the kiln of your heart that they may be enduring and strong, tempered and seasoned with love and resilience. Give me a well-trained tongue that has been borne out of silent listening in the sanctuary of my heart. May my words become love in the lives of others. Amen” (Macrina Wiederkehr, Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day).

I know from personal experience how very easy it is to say the wrong thing or to refrain from saying what is right. Both generally come from a place of fear not of faith. Both lead to regret. Both are typically not the end of the world like we sometimes think they might be.

I need wisdom to know what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. I need wisdom to know when to keep silent and learn to listen well. I need to seek forgiveness from others when I wound with my words or with my lack of words. I need to give myself grace, remembering that while I’m not who I will be or who I hoped I would be at this point, by the grace of God I’m not who I was and never will be again.