For the uninformed, Wordle is a word game. Basically, you have to guess a five-letter word with no clues. It starts with you picking a random word. If a square is yellow, it means that you have the right letter but in the wrong place. If the square is green, you have the right letter in the right place. If the square remains grey, it means the letter is not correct.

I held out as long as I could, but I finally gave in to the madness. I’m addicted to Wordle, despite how it makes me feel dumb sometimes when I literally can’t think of any words. But it’s always worth it to guess the right word and watch all five squares turn green.

I suppose there’s an element of discipline in this game. I feel like I’m training my brain when I play Wordle. It’s all about figuring out a pattern, like using words that have lots of vowels and common consonants.

The trick is that you can only play once a day. Oh, and there’s not an app for it. The real Wordle game is a web-based game under the New York Times website. So, if you choose, you can embrace the madness and begin playing. Enter at your own risk.

Something about this setup appeals to me. Especially that comfortable bed. The old joke goes that I am good in bed — I could sleep for days. That’s what I feel in my soul after a whole week of getting out of bed at 5 am. I could almost sleep for 24 hours straight.

Maybe one day I can have a little setup like this. I don’t necessarily want anything big or fancy. I just want a place that suits me and that’s nice to come home to, like a haven or a sanctuary. Now all I need is to win a small lottery or something.

Brennan Manning writes, “One hundred years ago in the Deep South, the phrase ‘born again’ was seldom used. Rather, the words used to describe the breakthrough into a personal relationship with Jesus were, ‘I was seized by the power of a great affection.’ It was a deeply human and moving way to describe the initiative of God, the explosion within the human heart when Jesus became Lord of one’s personal and professional life. It lent new meaning to the old Russian proverb, ‘Those who have the disease called Jesus will never be cured.'”

I’m thankful every day that the security of my salvation doesn’t rest on my love for and faithfulness to God, because both of those waver from one day to the next. Rather, my hope lies in God’s love for and faithfulness to me, because His love and His faithfulness are as unchanging as He is. Throughout all my changing circumstances and moods, God is consistently good to me.

Sometimes, the smallest things make a big difference. The above picture is called an output shaft speedometer gear. I’m not a car guy, so I’m not really sure what all that means (or even if that’s the right name for the part). I know enough to know that without this little piece, my speedometer doesn’t work in my Jeep.

Being as my car is very nearly an antique, these parts are a bit difficult to find. If I can find it, I know a place that can fix my speedometer. But all it takes is that one missing piece.

You and I have at times probably felt small and insignificant. It seems like there are people who are smarter, better looking, more suave, more charismatic who get all the attention and we tend to work and serve in the shadows.

Yet if you take away a small and seemingly insignificant piece from a machine or an organization, it doesn’t work nearly as well. In God’s economy, even the smallest sparrow has meaning to God, and you and I are worth much more than sparrows.

You may never know the impact that you might have as you live what seems to you like an ordinary unspectacular life and do your small acts of service and faithfulness. Yet only God knows whose lives might be transformed and changed by your obedience at those times you thought no one was watching.

Trust me, a small thing can make a big difference. Just try spending a night in a tent with a mosquito.

“If God can use a crooked stick to amaze the Egyptian magicians,
If God can convict Peter with a rooster,
If God can make a donkey have a conversation,
…If God crushed the walls of Jericho with the sound of a horn,
THEN WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE for anyone who is His child?”

God uses the ordinary to perform the extraordinary. God uses the mundane to create something magical. God takes the nobodies and nothings of this world over the most likely to succeed, best dressed, most influential to do a work that in time will get the attention of everybody.

Impossible simply means that I’m possible. Remember what a miracle you are. Remember that the fact that you exist, right here and right now, is in and of itself an impossibility made possible. Remember then that God is a specialist at turning impossible into the possible and the inconceivable into the inevitable. And remember that God is for you.

“How can a young person live a clean life?
By carefully reading the map of your Word.
I’m single-minded in pursuit of you;
don’t let me miss the road signs you’ve posted.
I’ve banked your promises in the vault of my heart
so I won’t sin myself bankrupt.
Be blessed, God;
train me in your ways of wise living.
I’ll transfer to my lips
all the counsel that comes from your mouth;
I delight far more in what you tell me about living
than in gathering a pile of riches.
I ponder every morsel of wisdom from you,
I attentively watch how you’ve done it.
I relish everything you’ve told me of life,
I won’t forget a word of it” (Psalm 119:9-16, The Message).

I read recently that if you’re filled with the God’s word, you won’t have room for Satan’s lies. I also remember what my first pastor wrote in my first ever Bible that he gave me — “This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.” Another pastor said that if you have a Bible that’s falling apart, that usually means that your life isn’t.

All that to say that I should probably wrap this up and get back to reading my Bible. I definitely need to hear from God tonight.

Today the high temperature was 70. Tomorrow, the high will be 36. And sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning, the low will be 19. Yikes.

I think the old adage about Tennessee proves true. If you don’t like the current weather, stick around for a day or two and it will change. Lately, those changes have been nothing if not drastic.

Just when you think that the cold weather is over and winter has exited the building, it’s almost like Mr. Snow Miser from that Rudolph special, The Year Without a Santa Clause, sneaks up behind you and yells, “Sike!”

Maybe, just maybe, the current warming trend will entice all the bugs to come out of hiding and then bam! another bout of freezing temperatures will kill them all. Especially all those pesky mosquitos.

I feel like if you spent any amount of time during your childhood in a Baptist church, then you get this. Especially if you attended the old school Southern Baptist church with just a piano and an organ and a minister of music waving his arms around while the congregation sang verses 1, 2 and 4 of all the hymns. If you want to stump a true Baptist, ask him or her to sing the third verse to any of the old standard hymns from memory.

I honestly don’t know what we as a denomination had against those third verses. Whatever the case, I’ve grown to appreciate those old hymns as I’ve grown older. There’s something timeless about singing some sound theology. While I also like the modern worship music, I’m certain that nothing comes close to those spiritual oldies but goodies.

By the way, if you’re a true dyed-in-the-wool Southern Baptist, you didn’t just read those words on the church sign. You sang them. You’re welcome.

I think C. S. Lewis said that. Even if he didn’t, it’s still true. I can believe that the sun is still out there even on one of those grey dreary days where it rains off and on the whole 24 hours. I can believe in love even when I don’t feel it. And yes, I can believe in God even when He chooses to be silent, or better still, when He answers a prayer of mine with a no or a not yet.

I’ve learned that God’s silences usually mean that I’m not ready to hear what He has to say. It means I’m not mature enough to handle the message. The silence is a way of saying, “Just keep trusting. The wait will be worth it when you finally hear Me speak to you.”

I’ve also come to understand that some of God’s greatest blessings have been when He said no to some of my prayer requests, because He knew that if I got what I wanted, it would destroy me. He knew better than I where my request would lead me. Also, He often denied me a good thing in order to give me something better.

Sometimes, God’s silence is a way of saying, “How can I give you an answer when I Myself am the answer? How can I give you anything apart from Me that would fulfill your deepest longing?”

Trust even the silences of God as you trust the heart of God.

“All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love. Of course, what these people mean when they say that God is love is often some- thing quite different: they really mean ‘Love is God’. They really mean that our feelings of love, however and wherever they arise, and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great respect. Perhaps they are: but that is something quite different from what Christians mean by the statement ‘God is love’. They believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else.

And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not a static thing—not even a person—but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance” (C. S. Lewis).

I sometimes marvel at how adeptly C. S. Lewis could take complex ideas and make them understandable. He was one of the foremost Christian apologetics of his day because he made deep theological concepts accessible to non-theologians. He made it simple, yet never simplistic.

I love the idea that the triune God has always had perfect fellowship within Himself. The idea of God is love in the context of Father and Son and Holy Spirit in perfect harmony blows my mind a bit. The Holy Spirit always points to Jesus, who always does the will of His Father, who always rejoices in His Son. It is like one of those intricate dances of olden days with all the steps and bows and cadences.

God didn’t create anything (including people) out of any kind of need. He was perfectly content within Himself. He created out of an overflow of joy and love from within the trinity that couldn’t help but spread into everything it touched. That’s the kind of joyous love that led to the incarnation and ultimately to the cross. That’s the kind of love that raised Jesus from the dead. That’s the kind of love that God through Jesus pours out into our hearts the moment we say yes to His invitation. That’s good news.