If you want to know what I look and feel like early in the morning, this meme perfectly describes my mental state. Thank God there is coffee to help me wake up and do all the talking and other adult stuff that allows me to function and to keep my job and to not go pants-less.

I am able to talk in the morning. Just don’t expect full and coherent sentences until at least 9 am. Maybe later.

“A person who cares nothing for praise or blame knows great inward peace….Praise does not make you holier than you are, nor blame more wicked. You are exactly what you are, and cannot ever be any better or worse than that, in the eyes of God. Attend to what is really within you, then, and you will not care what others say of you. People look at externals, but God looks at the heart. They weigh actions; God knows your intent….To feel no need of human support and assurance is a mark of inward confidence – of those who truly walk with God in their hearts” (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ)

I confess that even now I sometimes worry about what others think of me. I know most of you do, too. It’s something that’s ingrained in us in this very competitive, comparison-driven world we live in. But the truth of the matter is that most people aren’t evaluating you and measuring your merit as much as they are worrying about what you and others think of them.

There is great peace that comes with knowing who you are. When you know your identity and your calling, then you don’t need affirmation and you can handle the criticism of others. When you know that only one voice matters in terms of speaking into your core identity, then you can let the other voices go.

When you listen to the voice of your Abba that calls you beloved, then you don’t need to heed what anyone else says about you or calls you or says to you. Their words may wound, but they can never again shape or define you. Who you are is secure because of Whose you are. You don’t have to impress anyone. You don’t have to carry the facade of perfection. You can be honest in your shortcomings and brokenness, knowing that you are being made new.

Then you can have and know peace.

It takes a while to get going. I mean I suppose it has to warm up for a while before it produces those floaty bubble things (or whatever they’re called). But for me, the wait is always worth it. Listening to relaxing music and staring at a lava lamp may be one of my favorite new hobbies. I am so easily pleased.

I believe lava lamps were a thing back in the 70s, but I don’t really remember ever seeing any when I was little. I recall my grandmother had a light beside her bed that looked like a cluster of grapes, but I have no memories of lava lamps.

Fast forward to 2006 or 2007 when I was in the mall and passed by Spencer’s Gifts. Lo and behold, they had a lava lamp on clearance for $10. So obviously, I had to buy it (even though I still think Spencer’s is weird and a bit gross). And fast forward to a few nights ago where I enjoyed the fruits of my well-spent $10. Job well done, I say.

It seems weird to me to say “Happy Memorial Day,” because today is when we remember all those who gave their lives defending our freedom, yet we have turned it into a sort of National Grill Out Day.

This is not against grilling out on Memorial Day. I am all for a burger off of a charcoal grill. Those really are the best. But Memorial Day is more than that. It’s more than a day to throw a party.

Hopefully at some point during the day, we can take a moment of silence to honor the fallen. We can give thanks for the freedoms that we enjoy that were not free but paid with by the very lifeblood of these men and women. We can pay that sacrifice forward by being good stewards and citizens, by treating each other with dignity and respect. We can above all remember the fact that God in Jesus paid the very highest price for our ultimate freedom in the blood of His only Son Jesus.

I think it’s possible to be reflect and celebrate at the same time. We can do all the grilling and gathering while remembering and honoring our heroes. Above all, the best way to engage Memorial Day is to live in gratitude and thanksgiving.

I think at this point, we all need a good laugh. Or maybe a good chortle. Or maybe just a good groan. So here you go. You’re welcome:

“Solitude and silence can never be separated from the call to unceasing prayer. If solitude were primarily an escape from a busy joy, and silence primarily an escape from a noisy milieu, they could easily become very self-centered forms of asceticism. But solitude and silence are for prayer. The Desert Fathers did not think of solitude as being alone, but as being alone with God. They did not think of silence as not speaking but as listening to God. Solitude and silence are the context within which prayer is practiced” (Henri Nouwen). It’s easy for me to sit in silence and solitude, to let my mind go wherever it wants. But to sit in prayerful silence and solitude is a discipline that takes time to learn. My mind doesn’t automatically default to prayer. I have to still all the other voices and thoughts that clamor for my attention at every moment. Periodically I have to chase down my train of thought like a parent running after an unruly toddler that wants to go everywhere he’s not supposed to go and touch everything he’s not supposed to touch. But prayer is also the gift of God, because sometimes the words come flowing through me and everything else stops. Either way, God hears. When can’t get my mind to settle down, God hears me. When I’m drowning in voices and can’t separate one from the other, God hears. Before I speak a word, God knows it in full and set the answer in motion long before I prayed for it.

Until you are satisfied with who you are, you won’t be satisfied with anything or anyone else. And only when you see yourself through God’s eyes can you truly understand who you are and who God made you to be.

When you’re always looking to the next phase of life, the next career, the next relationship, you’re never fully engaged in the here and now. You never live in the moment because you’re focusing on the future and not the present.

It’s always, “I’ll be happy when I finally get out of school” or “I’ll be happy when I finally meet the one” or “I’ll be happy when we finally start a family” or “I’ll be happy when those kids finally grow up and get out of the house.”

If you’re not content with you and who God made you to be, you’ll never be content in any circumstance or with any person. But when you learn to center your being in God, then everything else has a way of falling into place and you find yourself at rest in God’s will.

“Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
    don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
    he’s the one who will keep you on track” (Proverbs 3:5-6, The Message).

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the Cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us” (John Stott).

There is so much suffering in the world. If you and I were aware of every single instance of suffering all over the world all the time, we could not bear it. But God sees it all.

God entered into our world of suffering by becoming one of us. But more than that, God entered into our suffering by enduring everything we must endure in this life. God redeemed our suffering by taking upon Himself the ultimate suffering on that world’s most painful torture device, the cross.

Those 19 families who lost 19 children know what it means to suffer. Their grief will never entirely go away in this lifetime. But the beauty of it is that God knows. Because of Jesus, suffering has new meaning. And suffering has an end.

One day there will be no more tears or pain. One day those wrongs will be made right. One day death will die and love will win. And the ultimate victor will be the God who will forever bear the scars on His hands and side and feet, the God who suffered.

“Proper praying is like a person who wanders through a field gathering flowers- -one by one, until they make a beautiful bouquet. In the same manner, a person must gather each letter, each syllable, to form them into words of prayer” (Rabbi Nachman).

I love that sentiment. I’ve had the privilege of being around some people who were amazing pray-ers. They may not have had the best conversational skills, but when they opened their mouths to pray, something beautiful happened.

I also believe that prayer isn’t just about beauty of words. You don’t have to be a poet to pray. In fact, you don’t always have to have words for God to hear you. I have sometimes borrowed the prayers of others, whether in the Book of Common Prayer or other written prayers. I have known many people who pray Scripture back to God. Even at times when there are no words at all, God is able to understand your sighs and groans as a kind of prayer language.

I can testify that there are times when I go to pray when the words flow out of me like they’re coming from somewhere else. It could very well be the Holy Spirit praying in me — like God in me is praying to God in heaven. I like that because I know that I am praying God’s will and God’s words instead of my own, and that God will always honor and grant those requests.

It boggles my mind that prayer doesn’t boggle my mind more. The very idea that I can have bold access to the throne of the God of the universe at any time in any place isn’t ever something any of us should ever take for granted, and yet we do.

Since it’s late and I am a bit weary, I’ll let one of my favorite guest bloggers take this one. Actually, it’s a favorite quote of mine from one C. S. Lewis, taken from Mere Christianity:

“I find I must borrow yet another parable from George MacDonald. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.”