“When John Kavanaugh, the noted and famous ethicist, went to Calcutta, he was seeking Mother Teresa … and more. He went for three months to work at ‘the house of the dying’ to find out how best he could spend the rest of his life.

When he met Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him. ‘What do you want me to pray for?’ she replied. He then uttered the request he had carried thousands of miles: ‘Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.’

‘No,’ Mother Teresa answered, ‘I will not do that.’ When he asked her why, she said, ‘Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.’ When Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have clarity, the very kind of clarity he was looking for, Mother Teresa laughed and said: ‘I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.'”

Sometimes, I think it would be so nice to have the entire roadmap of my life laid out before me so that I knew exactly what was coming and what to expect. I could rest a lot easier and have less anxiety knowing the outcome. But that’s not how God works.

God knows I couldn’t handle knowing all of my future. He knows just as well that if I knew everything, I wouldn’t feel my need for God or sense His provision as much. It’s like when I turn on the flashlight app on my phone. It’s not like I can suddenly see everything. I can typically see what’s in front of me where I’m shining my light. I know where to take my next steps. Then I adjust the light and I can see a little more.

That’s how God works. He shows me just enough to take the next step of obedience and faith. What lies beyond may be a mystery to me, but it is not to God. That’s why I trust God and let Him lead one step at a time. I don’t need clarity for my journey, but trust for the next step.

I hope you and yours are having a wonderful Halloween. By that, I hope you get to dress up as Baby Yoda and go knock on complete strangers’ doors for candy. Preferably chocolate.

If you get any Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, please send some or all of them my way. Those are my absolute favorites.

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The waiting is the hardest part, says the old Tom Petty song. How true that is. I mean, it’s easy to wait passively with folded hands and no effort. It’s another thing to wait by trusting God and being obedient with the next step He’s given you. It’s one thing to do nothing and another to keep putting one foot in front of the other when every part of you is wanting to quit.

I think waiting means that instead of wanting a way out of your circumstances, you instead ask, “What are You trying to teach me here? How can this change me for the better instead of me changing my address?”

God is faithful. Waiting is a way of reinforcing your trust and reminding yourself of all the previous times when God has shown up for you.

Wait on the Lord. Take heart. Let a few others into your struggles. Don’t fight alone. Pray for the courage to wait well and not give up.

“I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in ‘the High Countries’. In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is every- thing and Heaven everywhere. But we, at this end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere is Heaven.

But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself” (C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce).

It’s Friday Eve again, and that means it’s time for a little corny humor. I hope you’ve had a good week so far. If not, you still have the weekend to look forward to. Also, you have this bad cow joke hopefully to make you smile — or groan.

So there’s this TV show called The Chosen. Well, it’s more of a web-based series, but it’s phenomenal. It’s a series based on the life of Jesus, but it doesn’t look or feel like any other treatment of the Messiah, whether big-screen adaptation or mini-series or otherwise. These Biblical characters seem more fleshed out, more real, than any others I’ve seen.

It’s Biblical, but through the lens of creative imagination. While not every single line or scene is directly word-for-word from the Gospels, there’s nothing that goes against what Matthew, Mark, Luke or John wrote. It feels sacred yet very much fresh and alive. Plus, the actors look like they could actually have been from that part of the world that Jesus lived in during His earthly ministry, unlike the blond-haired blue eyed Jesus we’ve seen in a few film versions.

I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but I can testify that after watching the show, reading the Gospels has taken on a different perspective. I can see these characters as I read through Luke and then John. I can hear their voices and replay scenes in my mind associated with particular miracles or interactions from the Gospel accounts.

So far, there have been two seasons released. They just announced that a special Christmas episode will be forthcoming in the next few weeks. In fact, it will be available to view in select theaters with tickets going on sale on October 29. Here’s the link in case you’re curious:

https://www.fathomevents.com/events/The-Chosen-Christmas

“There is no such thing as the right place, the right job, the right calling or ministry. I can be happy or unhappy in all situations. I am sure of it, because I have been. I have felt distraught and joyful in situations of abundance as well as poverty, in situations of popularity and anonymity, in situations of success and failure. The difference was never based on the situation itself, but always on my state of mind and heart. When I knew I was walking with God, I always felt happy and at peace. When I was entangled in my own complaints and emotional needs, I always felt restless and divided” (Henri J. M. Nouwen).

How true is that? How many times have I thought that if I could get to a different season of life or to a new job or to a less stressful set of circumstances I would finally be happy and at peace? How often do I concentrate on changing my surroundings and never once give a thought to how God might be using my surroundings to change me?

Most of the time, I say I want to change, but not at the expense of my comfort and convenience. A famous writer once said that as long as your cry for relief is stronger than your cry for a changed heart, you’re never gonna grow up. That’s convicting, for sure. I can’t tell you how often in the past I’ve prayed for relief when God was wanting to change my heart.

My prayer tonight is “God, whatever it takes. I know that it will be more than worth it.”

There’s a Bible reading plan where you read five Psalms and one chapter of Proverbs every day for a month. There’s something to be said for how worshipful and (sometimes brutally) honest the Psalms are. Originally, I believe the Psalms were meant to be sung. It’s a kind of hymnal of the Old Testament. But if you read them all, you will encompass the whole of the human experience with all its emotions. I think how it goes is you read a Psalm, then add 30 to get the next Psalm, and so forth. For example, today you would read Psalm 25, 55, 85, 115, and 145. I suppose the extra day is for Psalm 119 with its 176 verses.

The Proverbs are a collection of the wisdom sayings of King Solomon covering a variety of topics. If you read one chapter of Proverbs a day, you will cover all 31 chapters in a month. Some may seem more relevant to our day and age than others, but I truly believe that God speaks through all of them if you read in a prayerful and intentional manner.

The best part is that you don’t have to wait until November 1 to start. You can begin at any part of the month, if you want. Here’s the link if you want more informaton:

https://iblp.org/questions/how-can-i-read-through-psalms-and-proverbs-month

‘Tis the night before Monday, which means that most of you probably need a little pick-me-up at this point. You’re probably already thinking about all that is waiting for you this week. So here’s a little funny to help lighten the mood. Also, it helps to remember that worrying about future stuff doesn’t make it go away. What it does is to rob you of present joy. So do your best to let it go (cue the Frozen Elsa song) and be thankful for all the good you have in the moment. Tomorrow’s problems will still be there tomorrow.

“God isn’t looking for religious protocol; God is looking for tax collectors who climb trees, prostitutes who crash parties, people who push through crowds wanting to be healed, people who yell at the top of their lungs like the blind beggar. He is looking for people who cut holes in ceilings, jump out of boats and follow stars to get to Jesus” (Max Lucado).

I’m thankful that God isn’t like us. When we want results, we go to the experts. We look to the elite and the famous for our inspiration. We want to be lead by those who have their lives together and come across as practically perfect in any way. But God is looking for people like you and me.

When it comes to who God uses, God seems to favor the nobodies and the screw-ups. Just ask the shepherds who were the first witnesses to the arrival of Emmanuel, God with us. Or ask Zaccheus, that infamously short tax collector that nobody liked. Ask just about anybody who was in the lineage that led to Jesus. They were adulterers, liars, foreigners, whores, and so on. Just about any one of the people in the Old Testament who got the flannel board treatment had their fair share of flaws and misdeeds.

But they’re in the Bible not because they were so great, but because they were the ones God chose to use. People very much like you and me.

 “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, ‘If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God'” (1 Corinthians 1:26-30, The Message).