“Patience is more than endurance. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says–‘I cannot stand anymore.’ God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God’s hands.” (Oswald Chambers)

I learned early on that if you want patience, you should never pray for patience. That’s when you find out how little you do have, because it WILL get tested. Probably more than once.

But just as you can’t grow physically without pain, so you can’t grow spiritually without some tough lessons, patience being one of them. It’s not like you ask God for patience and then BAM! you automatically are the most longsuffering person in the universe.

Usually, you find out that you are a decidedly impatient person, more so than you ever thought. But little by little, you find over time that you’re just a smidgen more patient than you were a week ago or a month ago or a year ago. Circumstances that used to vex you don’t bother you so much anymore.

Some virtues you can learn by watching others. I think (at least for me) that patience is one that you can only learn for yourself the hard way. So I guess keep asking for patience in your prayers and forgiving yourself and asking God’s forgiveness when your patience fails regularly. After all, it takes patience.

I really really am ready for the week to be over. Not because it’s been bad or stressful or anything. I’m just ready to sleep in and be lazy and have my weekend. I’m ready to turn off the alarm and sleep.

It’s kinda sad when you’re to the point where you fantasize about . . . sleeping.

That’s the concept that blows my mind sometimes.

God is in my past where I made the mistakes that I regret and acted too often out of fear instead of faith.

God is in my present where I’m learning to trust Him from moment to moment.

God is in my future, regardless of what worst case scenarios my anxiety throws at me.

And He is in all three places at the same time.

Time is a way for us mere mortals to process our lives. God is outside of time. Every moment in history is now to God.

If I let it, thinking about God being outside of time would make my head hurt, so I choose to trust that wherever my time of greatest need is, He has always been there.

Usually, I start off with the best of intentions only to end up angrily wadding up the folded sheet into a ball and stuffing it into a closet somewhere. If there were five steps to perfectly folded fitted sheets, I’d probably make it through the first four and fall apart during the home stretch.

I get the purpose of folded sheets, but I feel there is a design flaw. I’m not sure if it’s actually in the fitted sheets or in the people who are attempting to fold the fitted sheets. Either way, there will be cussing and tears and eventual resignation before it’s all said and done.

If you are among the 2%, consider yourself blessed. And yes, I will hire you to come fold my fitted sheets. You can even pet my cat Peanut. Probably after removing her from the fitted sheets a number of times.

I have several friends and family who are going through storms currently. One just put her husband into hospice care. Another is recovering from a rough bout with pneumonia. So many are figuring out how to handle wayward children or unfaithful spouses or stressful job situations.

I do think that you can talk about the faithfulness of God all you want, but you never really and truly understand it in a tangible way until you have nothing else to lean on but God. For some reason, most of us will try just about everything else before we resort to God, who ends up being the only true port in the storm.

I heard the word glory, as in the glory of God, described once as something substantial or weighty. In other words, you need something weighty at the center of your life to keep all the parts of your world in place and spinning in their proper orbits. Otherwise, when calamity strikes, your life flies apart.

Only God carries the kind of weight to keep you centered and calm when those proverbial storms strike. Only God can keep you singing in the dark places where you can’t see but can only trust.

It’s easy to throw cliches around like “it’s always darkest before the dawn” and “God won’t give you more than you can handle” (which is not biblical by the way), but it’s a bit more difficult to navigate once the storms hit. All I know is that we have to keep living, keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep doing what I believe is God’s will, keep trusting and praying even when all I have is sighs and groans, and keep remembering the promises God gave us in the daylight. Pick a favorite verse or a favorite Bible passage and soak in it as much as you can until you can quote it backwards and forwards and until it becomes a part of you.

So it’s true. In order to know the strength of the anchor, you need to feel the storm. But remember that God is simultaneously the One who goes before you into the storm and is with you in the storm and will be waiting for you after the storm passes.

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
‭‭Lamentations‬ ‭3:21-23‬ ‭ESV‬‬
https://www.bible.com/59/lam.3.21-23.esv

I finally broke down and bought me some new kicks. I’ve been needing new tennis shoes for quite a while now, so I bit the proverbial bullet and got these Brooks running shoes. These are the first shoes I’ve had in a long while that have white soles. Usually in the past, I’ve avoided those because they end up looking dirty after a while.

But these feel wonderful. I’ve forgotten how amazing new tennis shoes feel. It’s almost like walking on a cloud. I should buy new shoes more often.

In case you’re waiting on me to make some profound spiritual anology, there’s not one. I just really like the way new tennis shoes feel. That’s all.

I’ve both been there and done that. I’ve been at a job where a co-worker tried to explain a process to me, and it would never sink in. I’d go back and ask questions again and again and feel like a dummy. Finally, when I started trying to do it on my own, I’d start to get it. Finally, something would click and I’d have it down pat.

Sometimes, we just miss the obvious because we’re trying too hard and making things too complicated. I think when it comes to faith, you could boil it down to loving God and loving others. That’s how Jesus summed up the Law and the Prophets — Love God with all your being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

You can’t really love God unless you understand how much He has loved you first. You can’t really love others as much as you love yourself until you really do love yourself, and that comes from knowing and embracing God’s love for you. It’s really sort of reflecting God’s love back to Him and to others, like the moon doesn’t generate light on its own but reflects the light of the sun.

So step one is to let God love you. To soak in it as you soak in the rays of the sun. Step two is to let that love permeate every fiber of your being. Then you turn around and reflect it back to God and to others. Step three is to repeat steps one and two ad nauseum until either you master it (which is highly unlikely) or until Jesus returns and you are finally perfected in love.

“The thief had no time left to make his Lord proud. Or impress his parents. He didn’t get to hear church members brag about how he’d really turned his life around. He never shared his testimony. He could not offer Jesus any service or effort or earn any badges. He won not a single soul for the kingdom. No mission trips. He never tithed. He witnessed to no one. He studied no scripture. He wasn’t baptized. He was surely the worst performing and least-decorated Christian in history. And the first one to enter heaven with Jesus” (Marc Phillips).

Let that sink in.

Don’t get me wrong. Evangelizing, missions, tithing, Bible study, baptism, and the like are all important. But they are not what gets us into heaven. They are not what keeps us saved.

The most important thing about any believer is that he or she belongs to Jesus. More than to your family or to your spouse or to your children, you belong to Jesus. He takes first place over everything and everyone else.

But also remember that He bought you with a price. You matter to Him. Your testimony in heaven will be not how many souls you led to Christ or how much you tithed or how many mission journeys you undertook or how much of the Bible you memorized. It will be that Jesus remembered you. Jesus sought you out when you were a stranger. No matter what happens between now and eternity, your song through endless ages will be that Jesus led you all the way.

I heard a famous preacher once say that when he died he wanted to sit at the feet of the thief on the cross as a reminder that Jesus didn’t save him or anyone else because of merit or worth or deserving but because of grace and mercy and a last minute plea.

Just a short note: The Last Battle is the seventh and final book in The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis. It was the very book that helped me understand heaven a little better and the one that finally made me excited and ready to go there some day. Here’s an excerpt from that book that I think you’ll like:

“Then Aslan turned to them and said: ‘You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.’

Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’

‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’ Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. ‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.’

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

No, I don’t mean the kind of hangovers where you drink too much and have a headache the next day. I mean the kind where you have an extended holiday weekend and come back not knowing what day or month it is.

At least there’s coffee.

Even if it means mild confusion, I’ll take the extra day in the weekend. I don’t mind only working four days this week. But I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that it’s JUNE.

Where did May go? Or April? It feels a bit like we just started this year and now it’s almost halfway over.

I remember when I was a kid that those two or three months before summer break went by soooooo sloooooooowly. Sometimes, I didn’t think summer would ever come.

Now, I sneeze and a week goes by. I close my eyes for a bit and it’s already the next month. Time flying by is not as much fun as I thought it would be when I was little. Had I known how overrated and boring being an adult is most of the time, I wouldn’t have hurried so much through my childhood.

But at least there’s coffee.