This is my prayer for anyone reading this at any point in time:

I didn’t used to like rain. I think as a kid rain meant staying inside and not getting to play. Rain meant getting wet if I went outside and possibly catching my death of cold (as my grandparents used to say).

These days I don’t mind rain. I actually like it some days. There’s nothing more tranquil than the sound of rain, especially falling on a tin roof. There’s nothing better for taking a nap than a cold rainy October afternoon.

There’s nothing like the smell when you walk outside after a good thunderstorm. It’s a fresh clean smell that I can’t really describe in terms of smelling like anything else.

On rare occasion, I’ll be hiking at Radnor at it will start raining. I can hear the rain falling but can’t really feel it beneath all the trees. Those rainy days have turned out to be some of my favorite and most relaxing hikes.

I’m not a fan of rain for 10 days straight where the sky is nothing but grey, but I do like rain from time to time. Besides, rain is what makes the flowers grow.

I found this on Facebook and thought it was too perfect not to share. I may not live in Memphis any more, but it will always be my hometown.

“Dear Memphis, I am praying. So help me. I really am.

I’m praying for your families. For your ER doctors and nurses. For your wounded. For all who are sad.

I’m nobody, Memphis. I’m just a guy. A guy who likes your music. A guy who loves your barbecue.

I am located 200 miles southeast of you, but my heart is in Bluff City right now.

When I close my eyes to pray, my mind wanders along Union Avenue. Past Sun Studios, birthplace of rock and roll. Where Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis discovered themselves.

In my heart, Memphis, I am meandering Beale Street, past the clapboard shotgun house where W.C. Handy’s mother gave birth to the Inventor of the Blues.

My spirit is strolling just south of Beale, past the old Lorraine Motel, where Doctor King was gunned down in 1968.

In my heart, I am eating a pulled pork sandwich, Memphis. I am covered in red sauce, my shirt has already gone to be with Jesus.

I am at the Memphis Zoo. Riding a Memphis trolley. At the Peabody Hotel. The Botanical Gardens. Graceland.

And I’m praying for you.

Although, frankly, I’m not sure God will answer my prayers because I’m nothing. Truth told, I’m not even a very spiritual person. I don’t pray as often as I should. And if I’m being honest, I mostly pray during national championships.

But I heard about the gunman who drove through your town last night. He was shooting randomized victims. I read about how he walked into an AutoZone and pulled the trigger. Coldhearted. No remorse.

I read about the four he killed. About the terror he inspired.

My friend in Memphis called me last night, during the hourslong rampage. He said the whole town was taking cover.

‘It’s weird,’ he told me. ‘It’s like something from a horror movie.’

Memphis buses stopped running. Local television stations interrupted regular broadcasts with live updates. The Memphis Redbirds left the minor-league ballfield. Half the city was messaging each other like crazy, texting things like:

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. But I heard something outside.’

‘Gunshots?’

‘Not sure.’

‘I’m so scared.’

‘So am I.’

And all this comes after a decimating string of violence and murder, Memphis.

Eliza Fletcher. The 34-year-old kindergarten teacher. She was out for a jog. A wife and a mother. Beautiful and fair. Athletic and strong. A 3000-watt smile. Great personality. The kind of teacher who taught her kids to sing “This Little Light of Mine,” and meant it.

She was abducted on her running route. Killed.

Also, the local woman who was shot at her home. A carjacking. Autura Eason-Williams was her name. Fifty-two years young. Pretty. Well-loved. Accomplished. She was a pastor. A reverend at Capeville United Methodist.

She was found in her driveway. Multiple gunshot wounds.

Oh, Memphis. I am praying.

I am praying for the family of Yvonne Nelson, 60, a community activist. She was shot during an argument over money. Of all things.

For the family of Drew Rainer. The Rhodes College student who was one heck of a musician. He was killed last October during a home invasion.

I’m going to level with you, Memphis. Sometimes I’m not sure whether God is even up there listening. How can he be?

How can there be a God when so much evil happens in the world? And if there is a God, why does he allow all hell to break loose?

But when I look at you, Memphis. I see that I am wrong. Dead wrong. There is a God. He is ever present. He is deeply involved in this world. And he is a Memphian.

Your churches have banded together to finish the jogging route Eliza Fletcher began on the morning she was taken.

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, runners all over the nation will complete her jog. Races are being held in her honor, far and wide. Public and private. They’re holding memorial 5Ks as far away as Quebec.

Drew Rainer’s memorial fund has already raised $166,000. Donations are still pouring in. The prayer services for Reverend Eason-Williams were legendary. The whole city is alive with love.

And we who love you can see your incredible light. And you shine it so well, Memphis. And with God’s help, I pray nobody blows it out. I pray you will do what a humble kindergarten teacher once encouraged her students to do. To continue to let your light shine.

Let it shine. Let it shine.

Let it shine” (Sean Dietrich).

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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).