“To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of the marvels, cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces of life is to whisper a doxology in darkness.” (Brennan Manning).

I love this quote so much. I’m sure I’ve put it in a blog post before, but it’s just so good. And true.

It’s one thing to sing praise songs when the weather’s nice, when my job is going well, when everybody I love is happy and healthy, and when my checkbook is solidly in the black.

But how many could sing a doxology staring in the face of death? How many could still worship in the wake of financial hardships or health scares?

The answer is yes, but only by the grace of God.

Left to myself, I won’t choose to sing. I might choose to curse, but not to worship. I’d definitely complain more than I’d belt out praise choruses.

The true test of a faithful witness isn’t how loudly we sing when life is good, but how you and I can keep reminding each other of the goodness of God when life gets hard. We can still sing, even if it’s just a whisper . . . or even no words come out at all.

A single doxology in the darkness brings God more joy than all the Hallelujah choruses and all the Beethoven’s Fifth Symphonies and all the greatest choirs singing all the greatest hymns ever written. Just one.

I know that according to the calendar, it’s already fall. But sense when did the great state of Tennessee pay any attention to calendars or seasons? It does what it wants to when it wants to. I can attest that we have all four seasons in one week sometimes.

But I’m ready for real, honest to goodness fall. I want flannel weather with my spooky season. I want all things pumpkin spice, apple cider, and bonfire. I want for there to be just a nip in the air in the mornings and for me not to break into a sweat in the afternoons for merely going outside.

I mean I’m not complaining about the less hot temperatures and the very low humidity. It’s better than over 90 degrees with all the steamy humidity.

But still I want fall. That weather, that particular scent that only comes in autumn, can conjure up a million memories from yore. I can suddenly remember the faces of those who are no longer here. Plus, there are the Pumpkin-shaped Reese’s.

I believe in the Word of God. I believe that the Word of God refers to the holy Scriptures as presented in the Bible. I believe the Bible to be inerrant and infallible.

That being said, I confess that I am not always the best at studying it.

I read it. Sometimes, I admit that I speed-read through some of the slower parts, like the genealogies and the laws and all the begats. I can read a text sometimes and go away and not remember a thing, much like the man in the book of James who looks in a mirror and goes away and instantly forgets what he looks like.

But I found this prayer that might be helpful. “We pray for the energy and the courage, that we might not leave the text until we wrench your blessing from it.”

It’s a reference to Jacob wrestling with God, unwilling to let go until God blessed him. Unwilling to let go even though it was crippling him.

How often to I come to the Word of God already thinking about the next task or the next day? How often do I treat reading the very Word of God as an item to be completed and checked off my list rather than an opportunity to hear from God Himself?

Wrestling takes time. Wrestling involves intimacy. As I heard it said once, you can wrestle with someone who’s far away. Wrestling with God in His word means coming close enough to hear His words, and lingering there until I have heard them.

So while I have read the Bible through several times, I can’t really say that I have let the Bible read me. I can’t say that I have given God time to speak to me through the reading of His word.

Lord, give me the courage and the patience to not leave your Word until I have indeed wrenched a blessing from it and heard from You. Amen.

That’s what change looks like from the outside. Everything’s the same for a while, and then BOOM everything has changed. But that’s not how it looks underneath.

If you could see beneath the surface, you’d se thousands — maybe millions — of minute changes, like when the ocean current wears away the shore over time. Minute to minute, day to day, it looks the same, but in 10 years it won’t look the same.

Day after day, you look and feel the same, but one day you will look back at who you are now and see the difference. You will see what the unseen hand of God has been up to all that time.

If you trust in only what you can see, you will grow frustrated and lose faith. You won’t see God or what He’s doing. You will only see part of the picture, like the tip of the iceberg. But what’s important is what’s underneath and unseen.

That’s why the old adage says about God that when you can’t see His hand trust His heart. Trust that He is at work even when you can’t see it and can’t feel it. Then the frustration turns to faith and the restlessness turns into peace.

“The entire human race was created to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Sin has diverted the human race onto another course, but it has not altered God’s purpose to the slightest degree. And when we are born again we are brought into the realization of God’s great purpose for the human race, namely, that He created us for himself. This realization of our election by God is the most joyful on earth, and we must learn to rely on this tremendous creative purpose of God” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

It’s amazing how much simpler everything gets when you seek God’s purposes over your own. When you finally surrender and let go of everything you’ve been chasing all these years, you find that what you really longed for and sought after was in God all along. You find that just as water is to a thirsty man in the desert, so is God to your soul, and everything else is dry sand.

I can attest that so many things offer fulfillment that fades, but only Jesus offers living water that never runs dry or runs out. Everything else will leave you wanting more — or just leave you wanting.

Trying to find your purpose or identity in your sexuality or your ideology or your profession falls short of fulfilling all of the purpose for which you were created. Only the one who made you can give you your purpose.

According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. I think we do that when we live out of God’s purpose for our lives — knowing Him and making Him known.

That’s my hope. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the only reason I’m alive and not in hell and headed for heaven.

The gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t something I trusted in once to get eternal life and then moved past. It’s what I believe in every single day.

This gospel is non-negotiable. You don’t get to pick and choose which parts you like to keep and which parts you don’t to discard. You need all of it all the time. I need all of it all the time.

The gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t about me making the right choice or being smart enough to follow Jesus. It starts with Jesus, keeps going with Jesus, and ends with Jesus. From first to last, it’s only and always about Jesus.

I love a good bargain. I also love to go to my local Goodwill in search of treasure. You really never know what you’ll find on any given day.

But my new favorite is hunting for vinyl at record stores. So far, my favorites are McKay’s, The Green Room, Pink Star Vintage, and Luna Record Shop. Recently, across this gem at McKay’s for a very reasonable price. I like all kinds of music, but lately I’ve been gravitating toward early Jesus music and Contemporary Christian music from the 70s.

It’s finds like this that make the hunt worthwhile. Also, when you find free records that the store is giving away, that makes for a pretty good day. Remind me and I’ll tell that story at a later date.

And side note, but is it weird that I love the smell of old records? I don’t know how to describe it, but it triggers memories of when I was a wee little tyke going through my parents’ record collection back when we were living at Fox Meadows in Memphis.

So I guess I’m officially a convert to all things vinyl, but my favorite part is flipping through stacks of records in hope of a treasure. Hopefully, there will be more in the not so distant future.

This picture captures the essence of Peanut quite well, I think. Even though it’s a bit blurry, it shows how she loves to roll over on her back and wait for the inevitable belly rubs to begin. She’s one of the rare felines who will actually accept people petting her belly without taking a pound of flesh. She even sometimes purrs.

She also likes to be undercover. As in literally under the covers. She will disappear underneath a blanket for hours on end. I wonder if she thinks that she’s invisible because she can’t see us. Or maybe she’s just in need of yet another nap. Poor baby only gets 23 hours and 45 minutes of sleep a day.

My favorite part is that she likes to be around me. She likes to camp out in my lap whenever I’m listening to records or flipping through channels in a (mostly) vain attempt to find something worthwhile on TV. She can be quite chatty when she’s in the mood (which is often, apparently).

I’ve learned that cats are like people. No two are alike. She’s about as polar opposite to my first cat Lucy as night and day. They both hold a special place in my heart. I really am thankful that I didn’t try to find a Lucy 2.0 when I went to the animal shelter over 6 years ago. I let the right animal pick me.

I’m not sure where I’m going with all this other than to say rescues are great. I’m all for breeders and purebred animals, but there’s something special about the love a rescue will give you. That animal will never not be grateful for your love.

“O my Father, give me eyes to see, a heart to respond, and hands and feet to serve you wherever you encounter me! Make me a billboard of your grace, a living advertisement for the riches of your compassion. I long to hear you say to me one day, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ And I pray that today I would be that faithful servant who does well at doing good. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen” (Max Lucado).

That’s not a bad prayer for the upcoming week.

Most of us already are dreading the upcoming week. All those emails. All those tasks. All those deadlines. We look at the overflowing inbox and think that there’s absolutely no way to get it all done.

But what if we changed our focus? What if we choose to see our job as our place of ministry? What if we decided to be a witness in our workplace? What if we remembered that ultimately we’re not working for a boss or a supervisor but as unto the Lord Himself?

20 years from now, those tasks and emails won’t matter nearly as much as the people we work with. It won’t matter if you checked everything off your task-list if you didn’t make a kingdom impact on the people around you.

As much as I want to be praised for good work, what I really want to hear at the end of the day — and at the end of my life — is to hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

“‘Hush!’ said the other four, for now Aslan had stopped and turned and stood facing them, looking so majestic that they felt as glad as anyone can who feels afraid, and as afraid as anyone can who feels glad. The boys strode forward: Lucy made way for them: Susan and the Dwarf shrank back.

‘Oh, Aslan,’ said King Peter, dropping on one knee and raising the Lion’s heavy paw to his face, ‘I’m so glad. And I’m so sorry. I’ve been leading them wrong ever since we started and especially yesterday morning.’

‘My dear son,’ said Aslan. Then he turned and welcomed Edmund. ‘Well done,’ were his words. Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, ‘Susan.’ Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. ‘You have listened to fears, child,’ said Aslan. ‘Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?’

‘A little, Aslan,” said Susan'” (C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian).

Susan had been giving Lucy a hard time. Her excuse was that Lucy had made the whole Aslan calling her business up. But really she was afraid.

How many times do you and I act out of fear? How many times do we doubt what we know to be true because of what our senses tell us?

Lest you and I forget, our senses can be deceived and can lie to us, but God never has and never will. Still we can be forgetful when we’re fearful.

But even then God calls to us and whispers our name. He still calls us out of fear and into faith. And not even failure can stop Him. It’s up to us to listen to the right voice.