I love being a greeter. It does my heart good to see people’s faces light up when they realize that someone sees them and acknowledges them. Especially in a world that ignores and teaches people to ignore anyone who isn’t “pretty” (as they define it).

It was a picturesque fall evening with the temperature just perfect. For me, that means just on the brisk side, cold enough to keep me alert and awake.

It was that magical time between sunset and night when there’s enough daylight to cast a golden glow over everything and give the landscape a dreamish and surreal quality.

I’m reminded how often I feel that I’m entitled to grace. Of course, that’s absurd. Grace by its very nature is undeserved, unmerited, and most certainly unentitled. And most often unexpected.

If I possess true humility, looking truthfully at who I am and who God is, then I must confess that anything good in my life is grace. I don’t deserve any of it.

I hope that I can be a dispenser of grace and give it away just as freely as I’ve received it. Sometimes, I’m better at it than others, but always I’m a little less grace-full and a little more selfish than I’d like to be.

Even the good that I do is grace, because God blesses my self-centered motives and my paltry offerings and multiplies what I do to bless so many more than I know.

The point is not that I’m a bad person. We’re all broken people whom Jesus is making whole again. The point is that God is still good all the time. Always.

I feel old. Not because I’m achy or tired or anything like that. I just realized that 20 years ago the pilot episode of that classic sitcom Friends aired on NBC.

20 years. That means that half the students in college weren’t even born when Rachel came running into Central Perk in her wedding gown. I need to sit down.

I still love that show. I think I love it so much because the characters are so real and so many of the moments ring true. It’s not like so many sitcoms where the dialogue is basically endless setups for punch-lines.

Plus, who doesn’t like friends?

I’ve been blessed with some good ones. So many who love me for me, not as I should be but as I am, warts and all. So many who inspire and challenge me and — best of all– help make me more like Jesus.

Not every friend in my life is a forever friend. Some were only in my life for a season and for a specific purpose. Some weren’t good for me. But God used all of them to grow me up a little.

I’ve learned I can’t expect my friends to be something I’m not. I can’t hold them to a standard that I don’t live up to myself.

I love that Jesus is the friend who sticks closer than a brother. He said that He calls us friends because He’s let us in on the great mystery of what God is up to in the world and invited us to be a part of it.

I read something that made me pause: “Love is an act of endless forgiveness.”

I think that applies to friendship as well as romantic love. I forgive because I know I will need to be forgiven at some point. Probably at many points. You and I forgive primarily because God in Jesus has already forgiven us of so much.

I also love the fact that the one time I took a “Which Friends Character Are You Most Like?” Quiz and got Phoebe. They were more right than they knew.

I’d be okay with mornings if they didn’t come around so often. Or so early.

I actually managed to wake up on my own in time to make it to work, which is a good thing since the volume on my radio alarm clock got mysteriously turned all the way down. Weird.

But I’m glad tomorrow is Friday. Mostly because it’s my half-day at work and because I get to sleep in the next day. Woot!

I know what it’s like to be tired, and I also know what it’s like to be soul-weary, where all the sleep in the world does no good. Soul-weary looks like going through the motions because you’ve lost all hope and can’t see things getting any better.

I love that Jesus offers those people an invitation. Come to me, all you who are soul-weary and overworked, He says, and I will give you rest for your soul. Not just physical rest, but soul-rest.

Oh, and Jesus promises to work everything for our good. That means things will get better, and so will you.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what” (Atticus Finch).

Periodically, I get the urge to read a book I’ve read before. This time, it’s To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve read this book, but it’s probably at least twice. I always seem to forget how much of the book got left out of the movie (although that particular movie is still one of my favorites).

Whenever I read dialogue in the book, I hear the people from the movie. Especially when I read Atticus Finch, I hear Gregory Peck. I even hear the two kids from the movie when I read Jem and Scout’s lines.

I’ll probably end up watching the movie again after I’m done with the book. For some reason, I always feel compelled to watch it in the fall.

If you made it all the way through high school without reading this classic, I’d suggest you read it. Pronto. If I could only write one book (as Harper Lee did), I think this would be the one I’d want to write.

I’m as guilty as anyone of bemoaning Mondays and talking about how glad I am that Mondays only last 24 hours and only take up 1/7 of the week.

But I do think Mondays get a bad rap. And a lot of it is just self-fulfilling prophecy, like where if you think long and hard enough that you’re going to have a bad day, you probably will.

I get that Monday signals the end of the weekend. I also get that Monday means back to work, back to school, back to the humdrum routine.

But Monday also means another chance to draw breath, to open your eyes and see this beautiful creation. Seeing Monday means you’re alive. And to me, that’s a good thing.

Normally, I meet my friend on Monday and we go hiking in Radnor Lake State Park. That’s one part of my Monday I always look forward to. And what if Christmas falls on a Monday? Am I going to have to hate Christmas then?

I think that if you want to change your life, you have to change your mind. Change your way of thinking from focusing on negatives and “can’t”s to positives and “I can”s.

So I like Mondays. I like rainy days. I even like hot humid days (in very small doses). Because that means God woke me up and I was alive to see them.

This beautifully expresses the depth of loss and grief that C. S. Lewis felt when his wife died. I love the brutal honesty and transparency here:

“Joy died at 10 o’clock last night in the [hospital]. I was alone with her at the moment, but she was not conscious. I had never seen the moment of natural death before. It was far less dreadful than I had expected—indeed there’s nothing to it. Pray for her soul. I have prayed twice daily of late for us four together—you and Margy and me and Joy. I shall continue for you two.

I can’t understand my loss yet and hardly (except for brief but terrible moments) feel more than a kind of bewilderment, almost a psychological paralysis. A bit like the first moments after being hit by a shell.

I’d like to meet. Perhaps I could come up to town some day when you are in town and take you to lunch at the Athenaeum. For I am—oh God that I were not—very free now. One doesn’t realise in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy one must be tied. God bless all three of us.”