Yes, it is 11:45 pm on a Saturday night. It’s just me and Lucy hanging out together and Lucy has apparently already called it a night.

So it’s just me.

I loved how crisp and brisk the air was today on this truly Autumn-esque day. I could stand for it to stay this way for the next month or so.

I visited my usual Franklin haunts and still managed to be home on a Saturday by 9 pm. How sad is that? I need to think of some new Franklin places to haunt.

But fall does something to me. It reminds me of just about all my happy childhood memories and the people who aren’t here anymore and even some of my old pets who aren’t here anymore.

I’m reading a very interesting book called Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber. I don’t agree with all her politics or theology, but it is a well-written book with some occasionally profound insights. Read it at your own risk (it has some very non-Baptist words in it).

I’ll keep you informed on my my next choice of book after this one, as well as any notable restaurants or coffee shops I visit. As always, err on the side of grace, especially when it comes to your own faults and weaknesses.

Good night out there in social media land.

I just had a great image for what grace looks like: it’s when God comes up to you who have basically wasted your life up to this point and says, “I’m doing something great in the world and I want you to be a part of it.”

I still sometimes have a hard time believing it. God wants me? The kid who usually got picked either next to last or last for kickball and other elementary school sports teams?

Maybe you feel like no one notices you or knows you. Maybe you’ve felt unwanted even by those who were supposed to be closest to you, like your parents or your children or your spouse.

Get this: God wants you. Not because there’s no one else available and all the good ones have already been drafted. God looks at you and says, “Yeah, I want that one on my team.”

I’ll never get over grace because I’ll never get over the amazing feeling of being wanted and chosen and pursued and rescued. And best of all, it’s God who wants me and chooses me and pursues me and rescues me.

I don’t mind being a broken record when it comes to grace. Maybe if I keep repeating the refrain about that amazing grace that saved a wretch like me, it will finally sink in.

So I hope you don’t get tired of hearing about grace from me. If you do, too bad. I’m gonna keep talking about it because it changed my life.

“Lord, I come to You with open hands. If all I have is You and my next breath, that will be enough” (A prayer a friend of mine taught me).

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those open hands. Especially after the speaker at Kairos mentioned holding on to your stuff, your dreams, and your life with open hands.

Sometimes, I can live like that and I’m happy. I’m content.

Other times, I live with clenched fists, holding tightly to my things and my ideas about how life should go. Those times are when I’m unhappy and anxious, constantly comparing myself with others in an unhealthy kind of competition.

The truth is that I don’t own anything. It all belongs to God. According to King David the psalmist, the earth and its fullness are God’s. That includes my stuff. That includes me.

Open hands equal surrender. Open hands are my way of saying, Not my will, but Yours.”

My prayer is the prayer Henri Nouwen prayed that I’ve probably quoted here before, but it’s worth repeating:

“Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.”

“’And you, Ring-bearer,’ she said, turning to Frodo. ‘I come to you last who are not last in my thoughts. For you I have prepared this.’ She held up a small crystal phial: it glittered as she moved it, and rays of white light sprang from her hand. ‘In this phial,’ she said, ‘is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out” (Galadriel, Lord of the Rings).

My friend and I went walking in Crockett Park after work today. It turns out I misjudged the time of the sunset. I thought it was at 7:21, but my Weather app was still on the Gatlinburg setting. The sun actually set at 6:30ish.

So we ended up walking in the dark.

Thankfully, I had my trusty flashlight app. I couldn’t see too much with it, but I couldn’t see ANYTHING without it. It was that dark.

Immediately, I thought of every scary movie I’d ever seen where all those people who go walking at night in the dark have unpleasant things happen to them. Usually by people wearing Shatner masks or hockey masks.

Then I thought of that familiar line “though I walk through a valley dark as death I fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4).

God is with us in the dark.

I read this recently and thought I’d wrap up with these words:

“It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can’t see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us…” (Ann Voskamp)

“When my song through endless ages isn’t “I did it my way,” but “Jesus led me all the way,” then I know God is strong. There are two things I know (that I heard in a song once) that God loves me and He is strong. So tonight I am clinging to that Strong Love with everything that’s in me. God is strong” (Me).

According to Timehop, I wrote that 3 years ago.

I’ve found out since then that I’m not as strong as I thought I was and God is stronger than I ever imagined. In fact, God’s strength more than compensates for my weakness.

I also found out how deeply selfish and self-centered I can be. That doesn’t make me a horrible person. It reminds me that I, like you, share in that universal and fatal condition of humanity: sin.

But God’s love is stronger than my sin, my selfishness, and my shame. It’s strong enough to set me right again.

I still cling to that Strong Love with all I’ve got. I still trust the Strong God like my life depended on it, because it does.

At the end, that’s what I’ll look back and say: truly, Jesus really did lead me all of the way.

Once again, Henri Nouwen expresses my own thoughts better than I could:

“I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen for me” (Finding My Way Home).

I have absolutely nothing to add to that.

Every day is full of choices– choices that either take us closer to who we want to be or take us further away from those goals.

A friend of mine talked about 1,000 small decisions that either will lead us closer to or further away from Christ. Each decision in and of itself may seem insignificant and unimportant, but added together, they can move us significantly in either positive or negative ways.

So base on all that, I’ve made some choices.

1) I choose to focus on the positive and not the negative, on what’s right instead of what’s wrong. I’d much rather be an optimist than a cynic.

2) I choose to look for joy in the little things. I do believe that you find what you’re looking for, whether it’s something to complain about or something worth celebrating.

3) I choose to not give up or quit for at least 24 hours. Baby step to 4 o’clock, as Bob Wiley would say.

4) I choose to not dwell on the past 24 hours, whether I had a great day and was feeling close to God or I had a terrible day where I was selfish and grumpy all day long.

You don’t naturally drift into spiritual maturity. You don’t become a better person through osmosis. You have to choose and then act on your choices.

Here endeth the lesson.