I think I’ll go with D) all of the above, if that’s an option. I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in my 40s, but I think I’ve been making up for lost time with my ginormous Death Star coffee mug that I keep at work.

I confess that I’m not one of those purists who like their coffee black with no creamer or sugar. I take mine with plenty of both on a typical weekday. At least when it’s Folgers.

But still, all of the above still applies. So happy Monday, and we’re already 1/5 of the way through the week. Yay.

In my church, we’ve been going through the book of Ruth for the last three weeks. It’s been fascinating to see how God orchestrated a Jewish widow and a Moabite woman to bring about His purposes in bringing the Messiah into the world. But it didn’t happen overnight.

There was quite a bit of time involved, as well as a lot of waiting. For me, I’m not a fan of waiting. I’d rather get what I want sooner than later. But sometimes I wonder if I’m doing it wrong.

There’s a difference between waiting passively and waiting proactively.

Waiting passively is like hoping to get a date for Saturday night by sitting next to the phone and hoping it will randomly ring. Waiting proactively is like going out there and meeting people and making friendships and putting yourself out there.

Ruth waited proactively by being faithful in what she knew to do. She served Naomi, her mother-in-law, and provided for them. She sought out Naomi for her wisdom and guidance and put into practice what she learned.

Waiting on God does not mean doing nothing while you wait for God to provide. It means you make yourself ready to receive what God will give you when the time comes. It means you develop a character that can handle what you ask from God.

Lord, help us all to wait the right way, trusting in Your timing and provision in every circumstance, knowing that You above all know what we truly need and when we truly need it. May we never forget that You alone are what can truly satisfy our hearts’ deepest longings and desires. Amen.

I had a dream a few nights ago that has stayed with me. In my dream, my Uncle Bob and my cousin Timothy visited me and brought me gifts. I don’t remember what the occasion was or what the gifts were. I do remember that I was awed by the gifts. It did my heart good.

I do know that my Uncle Bob’s gift to me that I still carry with me is a love of music. When I listen to certain artists like the Grateful Dead or hear old-school jazz, I think of him. Whenever I see one of the old Ford Broncos, I also think of him pulling in the driveway for one of our family Thanksgiving or Christmas meals. I still miss them both and regret that I didn’t appreciate them more while they were alive.

If you have a family, the one gift that you can give your children is a legacy of hope and faith. They will gravitate toward faith in Jesus if they see it lived out in your life. It takes more than regular church attendance and paying lip service to God. It takes you bringing Jesus into every area of your life every day of the week and making all your words and actions into acts of worship.

While you can’t pass down your faith as an inheritance, you can pass down a lifetime of teaching them to observe all that Jesus said and did. God doesn’t have any grandchildren, as the old saying goes, and all your children must come into their own faith in Jesus, but nothing will help them along the way than seeing your faith taught and walked in front of them every day of their lives.

Even if you’re not married or if you’re married and don’t have children, you can still leave a legacy of faith to those in your sphere of influence — your relatives, your neighbors, your co-workers, and so on. You never really know who’s watching you and deciding if God is real based on how you live out your faith. But if you trust God and live a prayerful and faithful life, God will honor the results.

Tonight, I took a stroll down one of my favorite streets in Middle Tennessee, Fair Street. Just about all the houses look like cottages out of a George MacDonald fairy tale. I could see myself living in any one of them.

One in particular caught my eye. It had a sign that noted that it was in the process of restoration. In my own vivid imagination, I could see it one day looking like it used to look back when it was brand new in the early 1900s and life was much different than it is now.

I think my dream job would be to be a part of taking an old movie where the film elements were nearly beyond saving and removing the years of decay and dirt and scratches to reveal the art underneath. My favorite part of watching an old movie is seeing the before and after of the restoration process.

I believe that God’s primary business is also restoration. He takes broken lives and hearts. He rescues souls tarnished and decaying almost beyond saving and restores them to His original image. What seems like the daily humdrum of monotony is really God at work, chipping away the rough edges and slowing removing all the years of debris and dirt and decay.

It may not look much on a day to day basis, but one day you will look back and see how you used to look and think and feel and act all those years ago compared to who you are now. You will see the transformation in your own life and in the lives of all those whom God has been working on all this time.

God’s business is making all things new. God’s business is making you new again.

God says that you must forgive because you have been forgiven. Period.

Forgiveness does not mean you let them keep hurting you. Forgiveness does not mean accepting abuse. Forgiveness means that you relinquish the expectation that they can fix what they did to you.

When forgiveness is difficult, it helps to remember two things: 1) who you are in Christ and who you might have been but for the grace of God, and 2) Jesus didn’t just die for the people you like and who treat you right — He died for everyone.

Remember that God forgave (and continues to forgive) the worst in you, so you are not above forgiving anyone of anything. As with anything else, faith doesn’t make forgiveness easy but makes it possible.

Above all, forgiveness means that the other person no longer has a stranglehold on your mind and your thoughts. You can let them go and watch the bitterness and unrest in your heart being replaced by peace and joy.

Lord, help me always to choose forgiveness because of how freely you forgave me in Christ Jesus. Amen.

I think this says it all.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. And it’s only Tuesday. At least tomorrow is the midway point of the week. Then the weekend.

This is one of those weeks when I don’t want to adult. I don’t even want to human. I want to dog (or cat) and lay around all day and take naps whenever I feel like it. Right now, the idea of hibernation sounds really good.

Still, there’s coffee. That always perks me up (pun intended).

I can always pick up my Bible and read about the God who never slumbers nor sleeps. He never gets tired. His strength never wavers or weakens. He says that when I’m weakest is where His strength is perfected in me.

I don’t have to be strong all the time or brave all the time. I don’t always have to have all the answers and have my life 100% figured out. I can admit that I’m weak and He is strong. And His mercies will still be as new in the morning as they ever were. His faithfulness will never cease even when mine wavers.

I decided to list out a few pros and cons from this Monday, May 10 in the year of our Lord 2021:

Pro: I woke up.

Con: It was Monday.

Pro: At least it wasn’t raining today.

Con: It felt colder and windier than a mid-May day is supposed to feel.

Pro: It felt like a sneak preview of October — almost like a Maytober kind of day.

Con: I never felt like I was able to fully wake up all day.

Pro: There was coffee, so at least I could keep my eyes open and do adulty stuff (or at least fake doing adulty stuff really well).

Con: There are four more days until the next weekend.

Pro: Tomorrow is looking like a good day, and the rest might just surprise me with some unexpected goodness. And there’s more coffee.

Con: Potentially there’s a con to everything, depending on how you look at it, whether from a human-sized perspective or from a God-sized one.

Pro: God is bigger than anything I will face for the rest of the week . . . and beyond.

The End

In church, we’ve been going through the book of Ruth. I’m sure that by now you’ve heard the old joke that if you took this book out of the Bible, that would make the Bible fairly ruthless.

But the central character is an intriguing one. She’s from Moab, the archenemies of Israel. In fact, there’s a passage that I ran across in Nehemiah 13 that says that no Moabite was allowed to enter the assembly of God because they failed to show hospitality to the Israelites during their desert wanderings and in fact hired Balaam to curse them.

But Ruth abandons her own people and her own beliefs to follow after Naomi and this God of Israel. She leaves everything behind without once looking back. She eventually becomes mother to Obed, grandmother to Jesse, and great-grandmother to David, King of Israel and the one from whose line would come Jesus, Savior of the world.

It’s fascinating that out of all the possible people in the world, God chose Ruth as his means of bringing Jesus into the world. He chose someone who was an outcast, an outsider, a foreigner, and a stranger to the promise. Sound familiar? It’s the same way Paul described the Gentiles that God brought into the Kingdom of God. That’s you. That’s me.

It’s beautiful how God can transform an outsider into royalty. That’s what he did for Ruth. That’s what he’s done for you and me, making us into children of the King, a royal priesthood, and heirs to all the promises of God, because that’s what God does. That’s who God is.

“Tirian had thought—or he would have thought if he had time to think at all—that they were inside a little thatched stable, about twelve feet long and six feet wide. In reality they stood on grass, the deep blue sky was overhead, and the air which blew gently on their faces was that of a day in early summer. Not far away from them rose a grove of trees, thickly leaved, but under every leaf there peeped out the gold or faint yellow or purple or glowing red of fruits such as no one has seen in our world. The fruit made Tirian feel that it must be autumn but there was something in the feel of the air that told him it could not be later than June. They all moved towards the trees.

Everyone raised his hand to pick the fruit he best liked the look of, and then everyone paused for a second. This fruit was so beautiful that each felt ‘It can’t be meant for me . . . surely we’re not allowed to pluck it.’

‘It’s all right,” said Peter. ‘I know what we’re all thinking. But I’m sure, quite sure, we needn’t. I’ve a feeling we’ve got to the country where everything is allowed.’

‘Here goes, then!’ said Eustace. And they all began to eat.

What was the fruit like? Unfortunately no one can describe a taste. All I can say is that, compared with those fruits, the freshest grapefruit you’ve ever eaten was dull, and the juiciest orange was dry, and the most melting pear was hard and woody, and the sweetest wild strawberry was sour. And there were no seeds or stones, and no wasps. If you had once eaten that fruit, all the nicest things in this world would taste like medicines after it. But I can’t describe it. You can’t find out what it is like unless you can get to that country and taste it for yourself” (C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle).

I confess that I didn’t really get heaven for the longest time. Whenever I heard pastors or other people talking about it, I had a hard time getting excited about it. Maybe it was the way they described it as a never-ending church service, or maybe it was just me being a dumb kid.

What opened my eyes to the glories of heaven was the last book in C. S. Lewis’ masterful Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle. He described the joy of heaven as that feeling you get when you realize that school is over and the summer has started. That was something I could grasp.

I still don’t pretend to understand everything about heaven, but I do know that whatever I can conceive in my mind or imagine in my heart falls so far short of the reality. The very best parts of this life — those almost perfect moments, those fleeting moments of thrilling bliss are but glimpses into the heart of heaven.

Whatever it is, I can’t wait to find out.