I can’t think of a single thing to add to what Mr. Buechner said, so here it is:

“The love for equals is a human thing–of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. 

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing–the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. 

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing–to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. 

And then there is the love for the enemy–love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world” (Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat).

“The work of salvation means that in your real life things are dramatically changed. You no longer look at things in the same way. Your desires are new and the old things have lost their power to attract you. If you are born again, the Spirit of God makes the change very evident in your real life and thought. It is this complete and amazing change that is the very evidence that you are saved” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

I believe that none of us are saved by works. It is grace through faith alone that saves us. But I also believe that saving faith always manifests itself by fruit and works. The works are the proof of that saving faith.

Hopefully, you and I are being transformed day by day into the likeness of Jesus and less like the insecure, anxious, and selfish people we used to be before we met Jesus.

If my life shows no evidence of the indwelling Spirit of God and my actions never change day after day and I keep chasing after the old sinful ways (with no desire to do any differently), you have a right to question my salvation. There should be a change at some point, no matter how small or gradual.

I’m thankful that God who began this good work in me will see it through. I’m thankful I can’t go back to the old man I used to be — even if I wanted to go back — because the old man is dead and gone.

May our lives be the testimony that attracts others to want to know this God who can save and change anybody anywhere at any time.

I can 1) breathe and 2) murmur my thanks, so I think this qualifies as a mighty good day.

I can also 1) grumble and complain with the best of them and 2) focus on what I’m lacking instead of what I have, so I forget how blessed I am and diminish the day.

It’s a daily discipline, a choice that I must make every morning because my default setting is comparison and entitlement. As you and I both know, comparison is the thief of joy and entitlement makes us blind to our blessings.

That’s why God’s expressed will for us in Christ Jesus is in everything give thanks. Not FOR everything but IN everything, because God works IN everything FOR our good.

This is me preaching to myself, reminding myself of what I already know but have forgotten. Gratitude is still the best way to live.

“God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

Instead of me asking God to work in me, maybe I need to stop and look at what He’s already doing in and around me. Perhaps I need to look for what God is doing in my midst and join Him instead of asking Him to sanctify and bless my own plans.

In nearly every circumstance, we’re tempted to try and help God out instead of trusting unconditionally. The trusting part is always more difficult than the doing.

Starting tomorrow, maybe you and I need a little more trust and a little less trying, a little more faith and a lot less fretting. That’s a good place to start.

In light of the insanity that is shortly to ensue with the coming 2020 elections, these are some wise words.

“Home & kissing a baby’s pinking toes. 

Letting grief for the deeply divided state of things today just come like a gentle friend. 

Heartbroken to sit with the deep fear we have of each other: “More than 4 in 10 people believe that the other party’s policies are so misguided they pose a threat to the nation — and more than 55% of Democrats say the Republican party makes them afraid, and 49% of the Republican party says the Democrats make them afraid.” 

Letting tears over all the fracturing of all of us be like water for broken places, letting it grow grace to love like Jesus, letting it be like a gentle balm to the raw questions, the bruised conversations.

Thinking there is a way through for all of us, His Way, a broken way — the way of living broken and given, hands outstretched, cruciform.

Loving the other, the one who is different than us, is exactly how we love one another: Jesus tells us so. 

Loving someone who feels like the other — this *is* what it means to love one another. 

Living cruciform, hands given & stretched out to each other, even the other, especially the other — this is how we reach joy. How to do that today — and what if we all did just that today? 

Giving a hot coffee forward and hugging the mail lady. Call Mom. Leaving a kind line or two for someone who sees the world differently. Pray. Smile kindly to someone older, someone different, someone angry. 

Sit present to a little person and remember what laughter feels like, how brave joy can sound like music in the wilderness. 

The simple ministry of presence today — purposing to be present to Christ & fully present to each person on the way– this is the gift that we could give ourselves today — and we could be the gift like bread, broken & given, into a starved & hurting world today. 

And yeah, on endless, quiet repeat through the chambers of this broken world today: 

Do not be afraid of broken things — this is where God is resurrecting new things” (Ann Voskamp).

#TheBrokenWay #GiveItForwardToday #GIFT #BeTheGIFTwww.TheBrokenWay.com

As you know by now, I’m a music nut, especially when it comes to 70’s rock music. The latest in my classic rock journey (pun intended) is the group known as The Doobie Brothers.

Thanks to the magic of box sets, I was able to listen to every song from every album all the way from the first album in 1971 to the “farewell” tour live album in 1983. I put farewell in quotes because they reformed in 1987 and are still around.

A good song at the perfect moment is magical. Something happens in my spirit when I hear a song that fits my mood and the setting. But it’s hard for me not to speed a little when I hear China Grove or Black Water.

While Greatest Hits or Best of compilations are fine, there’s something to be said for listening to the albums and hearing all the non-singles and deep cuts and realizing that they had much more great music than the 5 or so songs you will hear on the radio at any given moment (which tends to be true of any group or artist who was more than a one-hit wonder).

It won’t be long before I’ll be cranking up Christmas music. But I’ll leave that for another topic for another day.

“I don’t know what your natural heart was like before God saved you, but I know what mine was like. I was misunderstood and misrepresented; everybody else was wrong and I was right. Then when God came and gave me a spring-cleaning, dealt with my sin, and filled me with the Holy Spirit, I began to find an extraordinary alteration in myself. I still think the great marvel of the experience of salvation is not the alteration others see in you, but the alteration you find in yourself” (Oswald Chambers, Conformed to His Image).

How true that is.

From day to day, I find very little difference in my actions and attitude, but when I look back to what I was like a year ago or five years ago, I see a drastic difference. I see less impatience and more trust, less irritation and more peace.

Maturity in your faith comes when you can be the first to admit blame and to take ownership of your actions instead of always blaming others. You find you look for the best in others and learn to deal with the proverbial plank in your own eye before you try to dislodge a splinter in someone else’s.

May we trust the process and trust God in the process. He knows what He’s doing.

I’m on my second quest to watch all of the (surviving) Classic Doctor Who episodes. Yay for me.

I’m currently in the Jon Pertwee era with the lovely Katy Manning filling in as Jo Grant, the feisty, fun-loving, capable companion to Pertwee’s Doctor.

I love all the monsters in rubber suits and the obviously fake space ships landing and taking off.

While I do like the newer incarnation of Doctor Who, there’s just something magical about the old pre-1989 episodes that appeals to me.

I intended to keep you more up to date with my quest, but I will do better in the future. In the meantime, live long and prosper . . . or whatever the Doctor Who equivalent is. Allonsy!

“From Jesus to you: ‘Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly'” (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message).

God never intended for anyone to be constantly on the go 24/7. He never meant for anyone to always be working and active.

God designed the sabbath as a reminder that we all periodically need rest. We need seasons of refreshment, relaxation, and reenergizing.

The four seasons in nature remind us that there is a time for planting and for harvesting, for growth and rest, for activity and for contemplation.

As much as I love my sleep, I understand that real rest isn’t necessarily taking a nap but living out of a peace that comes from resting in my identity in Jesus as opposed to a ceaseless striving to find myself and prove myself.

Anxiety says that everything has to be done right now. I’ve found that God’s timing is always perfect. I can trust in God’s promises that are as good as done.

“Prayer means letting God’s creative love touch the most hidden places of our being and letting Jesus’ way of the cross, his way of downward mobility, truly become our way. And prayer means listening with attentive, undivided hearts, to the inner movements of the Spirit of Jesus, even when that Spirit leads us to places we would rather not go. . . .

I say this with great compassion: we are living in an upwardly mobile society, a society in which making it to the top is expected in some degree of all of us. And aren’t we tempted to use even the Word of God to help us in this upward mobility? But that is not the way of God, the Father, Son, and Spirit. God’s way is not the way of upward mobility but of downward mobility. You know, as well as I do, that the question we will finally hear is not going to be: ‘How much did you earn during your lifetime?’ or ‘How many friends did you make?’ or ‘How much progress did you make in your career?’ No, the question for us will be: ‘What did you do for the least of mine? What did you do for the lonely in your cities, the prisoners in your country, the refugees within and below your borders, and the hungry all over the world? Have you seen the humiliated Christ in the faces of the poor?’

God has chosen to be revealed in a crucified humanity. That is a very hard realization to come to, yet all authentic prayer will eventually lead us to it. I hope you are able to feel with me our hesitation to let God truly love us in God’s way and to respond fully with our whole being” (Henri Nouwen).