Tag Archives: Seasons

Chapter-a-Day

Home Joy

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The two choirs that gave thanks then took their places in the house of God.
Nehemiah 12:40a (NIV)

It’s fascinating how things can so drastically change in the different seasons of life. Last night Wendy and I sat in the Vander Well Pub and enjoyed a drink together and debriefed about our day before dinner. As we talked about all of the things on the calendar in the coming weeks, I recognized within me an intense desire to have none of it, and to just be at home. That was a crazy thought. For most of my life, that desire barely existed inside.

I had a great home growing up that was safe and full of love, but I was an adventurous extrovert as a kid. Between all of the activities I was involved in throughout my school years, it was not unusual for me to leave the house at 5:00 a.m. and not get home until 10:00 at night. I kept weekends equally packed pursuing fun and always being on the go. College years were no different. I typically worked three jobs on top of classes and being constantly involved in campus activities and stage productions.

I have worked from a home office since 1994, back when no one worked from home. Our team didn’t talk about it with clients because they might think it was sketchy and diminish our reputation as a “real” business. For many years, I found myself venturing out to coffee shops and other public spaces every day to work. I needed the buzz of being around people and activity. I wanted the possibility of human connection even in casual, impromptu conversations with strangers. To be honest, home wasn’t always a joyful place for me to be in those years.

Life changes like the seasons. Yesterday I shared about the house that Wendy and I built ten years ago. Not only did Wendy design a beautiful and comfortable space to live, but I find in our home a Spirit of peace, love, and joy at all times – even the occasional contentious ones.

Today’s chapter is a bit like a homecoming at God’s House in Jerusalem. Nehemiah and the crew rebuilt the walls for the specific purpose of rebuilding and renewing the Temple worship prescribed by God in the Law of Moses. Solomon’s Temple had been destroyed and there had been no Temple, no offerings, and no sacrifices for some 150 years. With the walls rebuilt, the entire Hebrew community comes to Jerusalem. Two mass choirs with instruments march around the walls singing and playing in celebration. Everyone then ends their loud musical processional at God’s House. People bring the prescribed tithes and offerings, and the sacrificial system begins operation once again.

“Joy” is a recurring word in today’s chapter. In fact, the Hebrew root for “joy” (śmḥ) appears five times in verse 43 alone. The Hebrews had been through a season of exile. They were forced to make a home elsewhere, but the real home for their people and their community was always Jerusalem, God’s House, and the rhythms of life and worship that God prescribed and that had been at the center of their identity as a people for centuries. In today’s chapter, they are finally home. Joy flows.

Here I sit in the quiet of my home office. I was here all day yesterday from 5:00 a.m. until I met Wendy downstairs in the Pub at 6:00 p.m. I’ll be here all day working on projects and proposals again today. I’m okay with that. In fact, I downright joyful about it.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Promotional graphic for Tom Vander Well's Wayfarer blog and podcast, featuring icons of various podcast platforms with a photo of Tom Vander Well.
These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
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Chapter-a-Day

Rhythms

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The Lord said to Moses, “Give this command to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Make sure that you present to me at the appointed time my food offerings, as an aroma pleasing to me.’”
Numbers 28:1-2 (NIV)

Here in Iowa I continue to feel the natural change in seasons. Yesterday morning as I set out on a walk it was almost chilly. Later in the day when I went out to check the mail, my body was still expecting the blast furnace heat of the summer sun. Instead, I almost shuddered with the crisp coolness of the air.

This change is part of the natural rhythm of creation and every year this change brings back a flood of memories. The return to school and coming home to mom’s chocolate chip cookies and afternoons playing football in the back yard with the neighborhood kids. The excitement of Friday nights at the high school football game. The smell of burning leaves and countless pillars of smoke rising into the sky for blocks and blocks.

Just this past week as Wendy and I took some vacation we took time to talk about and review our rhythms. Labor Day weekend itself has become a ritual for us and four of our friends who have spent the weekend together for every year for years. It’s become part of the annual rhythm of our lives. But we have daily rhythms and weekly rhythms, as well, whether or not we are even conscious of it.

As Wendy and I examined our daily rhythms we came to the conclusion that things needed some tweaking. Rhythms can be healthy and productive, but sometimes what started as a good thing slowly leads towards the shadow side. Less productive, less healthy, and less life-giving. Sometimes it happens so slowly and subtly that you hardly notice.

In today’s chapter, as the Hebrews sit encamped across from the Promised Land and prepare to enter in, God tells Moses to remind the people of the sacrifices, offerings, and festivals that He had prescribed 40 years before at Mount Sinai. Daily rituals. Weekly rituals. Monthly rituals. Annual rituals.

Spiritual rhythms.

For modern readers, this can easily feel repetitive and silly. Don’t they have a PDF of all this on the hard drive? Why all the repetition?

But that’s just it. They didn’t have a PDF or a hard drive. The written word was rare and the ability to even read or write was just as rare. People needed to be told things, and important things needed to be repeated. Repetition is the key to memory, like crisp fall mornings conjuring dreams that I have to return to high school because there was a class I failed to take.

God is drawing His people near at this momentous inflection point in their journey. Remember who I am. Remember who you are. Things are about to change. I was with you on the road out of Egypt. I’ve been with you on the road through the wilderness. I will be with you on the road in to the Promised Land. These rhythms of offering, sacrifice, ritual, and communion will provide you with the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual connection points you’ll need.

Spiritually, I need my rhythms, too. I need to be mindful of my rhythms. I need rhythms that help connect me with God and others. I need rhythms that foster Life and shalom in increasing measure. This means that sometimes I have to stop. I have to examine my rhythms. I might even have to make some changes. Which is exactly what Wendy and I have implemented this week.

But one rhythm that won’t change is early mornings in the quiet with God, reading a chapter-a-day, meditating on what the Great Story has for me, and sharing it here.

Thanks for being a part of my rhythm, friend.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Promotional graphic for Tom Vander Well's Wayfarer blog and podcast, featuring icons of various podcast platforms with a photo of Tom Vander Well.
These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!
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Chapter-a-Day

Refined in the Fire

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Refined in the Fire (CaD Ezk 24) – Wayfarer

“‘Now your impurity is lewdness. Because I tried to cleanse you but you would not be cleansed from your impurity, you will not be clean again until my wrath against you has subsided.’”
Ezekiel 24:13 (NIV)

As I reflect back on my life journey, there are seasons of the journey that stand out for their pain and struggle. There was the season of my prodigal-like rebellious behavior and the painful pig-slop-like consequences of those mistakes. There was the season of my divorce which created pain on multiple levels of life and relationships. There was also the season of Wendy’s and my journey through infertility.

The truth is that each of these seasons were crucial periods of spiritual growth for me. There were lessons that I learned about faith, trust, perseverance, patience, forgiveness, repentance, and grace that I would not have learned any other way.

There is no way around the fact that human spiritual progress requires pain. Conversely, a life of ease and affluence is a surefire recipe for spiritual immaturity. And a related truth is what M. Scott Peck discovered in his research for The People of the Lie: evil only responds to the power of blunt force.

I found today’s chapter is fascinating on multiple levels. It is Ezekiel’s last chapter of doom-and-gloom judgment against God’s own people. The object and theme of his prophetic messages changes from this point on. Back in chapter 3, God made Ezekiel mute other than when he was given a prophetic message. With word that his prophecies concerning the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem had indeed come to pass, God frees Ezekiel’s lips from being muted (kind of like John the Baptist’s dad, Zechariah, in Luke 2).

I also found a connection in today’s chapter to a message I’m preparing to deliver to my local gathering of Jesus’ followers this Sunday. God tells His people through Ezekiel that their exile and Jerusalem’s downfall is like a metallurgist’s fire that refines and purifies the precious metal “so that its impurities may be melted and its deposit burned away.”

This is exactly the same metaphor that Peter picked up on when he wrote in his first letter to believers scattered across the Roman empire by persecution:

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
1 Peter 1:6-7 (NIV)

Just like Ezekiel’s message, Peter sees that trials in life are God’s version of a refiner’s fire. I struggle, I cry out, I pray, I mourn, I even scream. Yet the entire process is teaching me what is truly important, how much I need God, how to trust the Story God is telling in and through me, and how to endure.

If you want to find someone with spiritual maturity don’t look for an adult trust fund child who has lived in extravagant affluence since the day he was born and has never worked a day in his life. If you want find spiritual maturity, look for the individual whose life has sent them to hell and back. You’re far more likely to find it there.

In the quiet this morning, I’m uttering a prayer of praise and thanks for the seasons of pain and struggle I’ve been through and for all the ways that they have spiritually refined me. And, like Paul states in his letter to the believers in Philippi, I’m not saying that I have already obtained some pinnacle of spiritual maturity. Far from it. I’m sure that there are seasons of struggle to come, and deeper spiritual lessons to learn. And so, “I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

And so, I enter another day on the journey.

Have a great weekend, friend.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Perpetually Growing

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Perpetually Growing (CaD 2 Thess 1) – Wayfarer

We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing.
2 Thessalonians 1:3 (NIV)

Wendy and I spent the past week at the lake with the kids and grandkids and good friends of theirs who have a daughter Milo’s age and another baby on the way. Wendy and I had a great time with them and enjoyed playing host. We got home late in the day on Saturday, and yesterday we joined our local gathering of Jesus’ followers, including my father.

It’s a fascinating season of life for me. I’ve been meditating on this a lot in recent days. Our kids are in the throes of parenting young children, being first-time homeowners, building careers, and paying the bills. At the same time, we’re walking with my 87-year-old father who is learning about life without his spouse of 60-plus years, living in a relatively new community, and managing the aches and pains, bumps and bruises, and perpetual medical diagnoses that come with the human body in its inevitable decline.

While at the lake, our daughter asked, “Were you overwhelmed all the time when we were little kids? I don’t remember you seeming overwhelmed.”

I laughed. Oh man, was I overwhelmed.

I shared that story yesterday morning with a young man who was in high school with Taylor and Clayton and is in the same season of life. His father, now retired, was standing there with him. We had a good talk and a few laughs about life’s stresses and being overwhelmed in that season of life. His father then added, “I hate to break it to you, but I sometimes feel just as overwhelmed today!”

And, it’s true. The things that overwhelm us change, but life has its challenges in every season on life’s road.

Today we begin Paul’s second letter to his friends in Thessalonica. It was written shortly after the first letter. It’s shorter than the first, and the themes are relatively the same. He wants to applaud how they are handling continued persecution. He wants to address issues surrounding Jesus’ return, and he wants to give them encouragement.

In today’s opening of the letter, Paul acknowledges that their faith is growing “more and more” and their love for one another is “increasing.” One of the things that struck me about this was reading in the context of a post I wrote last week in which Paul encourages an increase in the Thessalonian believers’ faith and love. They took his encouragement to heart and continued to grow in faith and love.

This takes me back to Taylor’s observation and question about young children being relatively oblivious to their parents’ being overwhelmed. I have found along the life journey that we have certain perceptions of what life will be like down the road that are simply wrong. I used to think that at some point on life’s road, I would feel like I’ve “arrived” and things get easier. They don’t. The challenges simply look different. Along with this misguided sense of “arrival,” I thought that one sort of reaches a pinnacle place of spiritual maturity in which you’ve learned it all. Quite the opposite, the further I push into spiritual maturity the more aware I am of how much further I have to go. As C.S. Lewis put it, there’s always more to reach for “further up, and further in.”

And that’s why I loved Paul’s acknowledgment of the Thessalonian believers’ increase in faith and love. They were fledgling believers, but they were growing and increasingly producing spiritual fruit.

In the quiet this morning I am reminded that this should never end on this earthly journey. As long as I have life and breath I will be pushing further up, and further in toward God’s Kingdom. I will perpetually be letting old things pass away so that new things may come. I will always be spiritually growing, learning, repenting, and increasing in faith and love, even as my body begins and continues the slow decline to physical death.

It is the beginning of another work week. I have a number of things on my task list this week. I have added “Grow in and exhibit more faith and love” to the top of the list. If I’m not increasing in that, accomplishing all of the other tasks is eternally meaningless.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

“A God in Heaven”

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"A God in Heaven" (CaD Dan 2) – Wayfarer

Daniel replied, “No wise man, enchanter, magician or diviner can explain to the king the mystery he has asked about, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.
Daniel 2:27-28 (NIV)

Along my life journey, I’ve witnessed an amazing amount of change. We are in the age of technology, and my generation has arguably witnessed more technological advances in our lifetime than any other generation in human history. Among my favorites in the daily scroll of memes are those that remind me of life in my childhood. It was so, so different.

The change I’ve witnessed, however, has not been merely technological. It has also been cultural, intellectual, and spiritual. It is also said that we are now living in a post-Christian age, and I have observed this shift. Most of the. mainline Protestant denominational institutions that existed and held sway have fractured, imploded, and exist as a shell of their former selves. Church attendance was waning before the pandemic. Recent research shows that COVID accelerated that decline and shuttered many small churches altogether.

Culture wars enflamed by divisive politics, racial tension, and the pandemic seem to have not only accelerated the decline of institutional Christianity but fostered increased antipathy, even hatred. Consider this headline from Time magazine, a headline that was unthinkable from a major news outlet forty years ago: “Regular Christians are No Longer Welcome in American Culture.”

When I was a youth, it was Christian power brokers who sought to use politics and institutions to cancel enemies, threaten opponents, and enforce their ideology across the cultural spectrum. I have observed the pendulum swing to the opposite side in my lifetime. It is a different group of power brokers who have become the dominant voice of culture, canceling enemies and threatening dissenters, silencing opposition, and promoting its ideology as gospel truth that is not to be questioned or doubted.

I live in the most fascinating of times.

I can’t imagine the cultural shift that Daniel experienced as he was pulled from the life he knew, was drug to a foreign land, forced into a re-education program, and placed into the service of the king who destroyed his home and slaughtered his people. And, in the midst of it, God says He wants Daniel and his people to embrace this change and be a blessing to his enemy.

A couple of days ago, I wrote of the “wilderness” that Jung and Campbell noticed every hero goes through in all the great stories. The fourth step in that wilderness journey is that the hero “encounters allies and enemies, undergoes challenges from which no escape seems possible. The stakes are clearly life and death.“

In today’s chapter, Daniel finds himself with just such a challenge. The King has a dream and demands that his magicians, astrologers, enchanters, and wise men both tell him what the dream was and what it meant. If they don’t, he’s going to kill them all, including our hero Daniel and his friends. Daniel and his friends pray, and God gives Daniel the answer in a night vision.

When Daniel approaches the king the following day, he makes clear that he had no part in divining the answer and interpretation, but “there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries.” The title “God of Heaven” is a title used by Abraham back in Genesis, but then it doesn’t appear again until the exile and post-exile writings of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. It appears that Daniel found a name for God that was acceptable to both him and his pagan Persian enemy. He finds a way to bridge the cultural gap and introduce the king to his God who has “raised him up” despite his ignorance of the fact. God making Himself known to King Nebuchadnezzar is a theme in Daniel’s story arc.

In the quiet this morning, I think about myself as a disciple of Jesus living in a culture that I observe becoming increasingly oppositional. At the same time, I observe fellow believers becoming angry, defiant, and oppositional in return. I, however, see in Daniel’s story an example to follow. If I truly believe what I say I believe, this includes the truth of Daniel’s prayer in today’s chapter:

“[God] changes times and seasons;
    he deposes kings and raises up others.”

If God was in control, even in the change of “times and seasons” that Daniel experienced being thrust into Babylonian captivity, then I think I have to consider the change in times and seasons I have witnessed and experienced to also be part of the Great Story that God is authoring. And if that is true, then Daniel’s example of remaining faithful in the courts of his enemy and humbly finding ways to introduce his enemy to God is an example I think God would have me follow in similar (albeit not as extreme…yet) circumstances.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Seasons of Life

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Seasons of Life (CaD 2 Ki 13) – Wayfarer

Now Elisha had been suffering from the illness from which he died. Jehoash king of Israel went down to see him and wept over him.
2 Kings 13:14 (NIV)

As I have progressed in my life journey, the more aware I have become of the flow of seasons of life. From our current waypoint on the road of life, Wendy and I find ourselves in a season in which we are walking with parents and a grandparent as they walk ahead of us on life’s homestretch. We also have children on the road behind us in the busy years of establishing careers, parenting little children, and hanging on as life traverses the roller coaster peaks and valleys of adulthood.

When I was parenting our daughters, I endeavored to engage and enjoy every stage of their development. This meant embracing the ups and downs of diapers and Disney princesses, boy bands and body changes, hair days and horomones. Of course, I found some stages personally more enjoyable than others. Yet by choosing to embrace each stage of development, I learned to both love the journey in every season as well as appreciate more fully the women they’ve become.

Along the way, I’ve found that my spiritual journey also has its seasons. There have been seasons of tremendous spiritual growth when God seemed to be doing amazing things in my life all the time. There have been seasons that have felt like a trek through Death Valley when everything felt dry and I was desperate for an oasis. There have been seasons of planting, seasons of storms, seasons of wandering, seasons of change, and seasons of abundance.

Today’s chapter tells of the reigns of Kings Jehoahaz and Joash of the northern tribes of Israel. In the middle of the chapter, it mentions the prophet Elisha for the first time since back in the ninth chapter. Given the dates and the lengths of the reign of Israel’s kings, Elisha has not been part of the story for some 43 years.

I meditated on this in the quiet this morning. Through the days of Ahab and Jezebel, the prophets Elijah and Elisha were central figures in the story. They called down fire from heaven, raised the dead, performed breathtaking miracles, and were central players in the highest level of politics.

Then, with the end of Ahab and Jezebel’s dynasty, Elisha exits stage right and is not heard from again for over four decades when he is called back on stage for his death scene.

I have observed both in myself and in others, the expectation that life has some sort of predictable trajectory. There certainly are general stages of this life that most people experience with some broad commonalities. Within that, however, I’ve found there to be tremendous ebb and flow.

We forget that Jesus spent only three years in ministry. He spent thirty years in obscurity growing, learning, and then plying his father’s carpentry trade.

Moses spent 40 years as a shepherd before God called him to lead the Hebrews out of slavery.

Elisha and Elijah were raised up to be God’s mouthpiece during the reigns of Ahab, Jezebel, and their descendants. It was a period of some 36 years. Then Elisha disappears from the scene. Was God done with him? Certainly not. He simply entered a different season of life.

I’ve come to understand that part of the spiritual journey is embracing every season of that journey, just as I tried to embrace each season of our daughters’ development. There have been seasons of excitement and seasons of grind. There are seasons of mountaintop vistas and seasons of slogging through the desert. There have been seasons in the spotlight and seasons in the wings.

Two things I have done no matter the season in which I find myself:

First, I stick with my daily relational touchpoints with God and others. I spend time in the quiet. I read the Great Story. I have conversations with God. I stay connected with an inner circle of others with whom I share the journey.

Second, I constantly remind myself what the sage of Ecclesiastes wrote: “There is a season for every purpose under heaven.” If I can trust the Story and God’s purposes for me in it, then I can press on through each and every season knowing that it’s somehow preparing me for the next season.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Today’s featured image was created with Wonder AI.

Chapter-a-Day

The End of the Line

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In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the Israelites to Assyria.
2 Kings 17:6 (NIV)

In this life, some things end. That’s the simple truth of the matter. Along this life journey I’ve come to the realization that we human beings like to feel a sense of the eternal amidst the temporal. We like things to remain fairly stable. We are lulled into a state of accepting that what has been always will be…

  • I will always live here…
  • I will always have this job…
  • We will always be together…
  • We will always be friends…
  • My parents will always stay together…
  • My children will outlive me…

And then suddenly, things end. Relationships end, jobs go away, homes are destroyed, people move away, churches split, companies are acquired, and so on, and so on, and so on.

World rocked. Equilibrium off. Heart breaking. Mind spinning.

Life changing.

In today’s chapter, we get to the end of the line for the northern Kingdom of Israel. For 190 years they had existed through a roller coaster succession of monarchs. Hoshea would be the final king. The Assyrian empire lays siege to Israel’s capital city, Samaria. It is destroyed, plundered, and the Israelites taken back to Assyria as slaves. Using the ancient playbook of conquest, the Assyrians move a melting pot of other immigrants peoples into the neighborhood to ensure that the Israelites left behind don’t unite in rebellion against the Empire. It is the end of the Kingdom of Israel.

As I read and mull over this morning’s chapter, I’m reminded of our chapter-a-day journeys through the prophets who warned that this was coming. For those who had ears to hear, the warning signs were there. Amidst the chaos, grief and questions that arise when things end, we can often look back with 20-20 hindsight and see that the signs were all there. In our desire for the eternal amidst the temporal we simply choose to ignore them.

I’m also mulling over the lessons that I’ve learned both in my journey through God’s Message and my journey through life. Things must end for us to experience new beginnings. In order for there to be resurrection, something must die. God even wove this truth into His artistic expression of creation. The seasons teach us that the new life and recurring promises of spring don’t happen with out the long death of winter. In summer Iowa has such lush green landscape with deep blue skies that it almost creates a new color all its own. But eventually we reach the end of the line. Lush green corn turns to ugly brown stalks, and the blue skies give way to the dull gray snow clouds of winter. And then it happens again, and again, and again. Old things pass away, then new things come.

For the people of Israel, this chapter of life is ended. But the story isn’t over. The prophets predicted this, as well. A new chapter has begun. Perhaps unexpected. Perhaps unwanted. Perhaps scary and unnerving. Yet that’s why we love great stories. They take us to unexpected places and new experiences we hadn’t dreamed or imagined. But we don’t get there without journeying through the end of the previous chapter(s).

Chapter-a-Day

Resuscitating a Worn Out Phrase

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Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”
John 3:5 (NRSV)

I find it fascinating how some words or phrases take on unintended meanings. As I follow the media coverage of the presidential elections, I will on occasion hear those in the media labeling people, or groups of people, as “Born Again” Christians. The phrase became popular back in the 1970s when Chuck Colson, a convicted Watergate conspirator, wrote a book entitled Born Again to tell the story of his own spiritual rebirth. Now when the label is used by members of the media, I get the feeling that the intended image is that of a narrow-minded, widely ignorant, politically conservative, socially repressed minion blindly leading some televangelist. While there are definitely people who fit that description, I find it sad that they seem to have become synonymous with the term “born again” because it empties the phrase of its intensely powerful meaning.

The phrase “born again” did not originate with Chuck Colson or evangelical Christians. It comes directly from Jesus, and it’s found in today’s chapter. Jesus was having a conversation with a religious man name Nicodemus and he simply makes the statement that if you want to enter God’s kingdom you must experience a rebirth.

The idea of rebirth is not new and it wasn’t new when Jesus said it to Nicodemus. It’s a theme woven into the tapestry of time and creation, and even Jesus seemed a bit frustrated that Nic was perplexed by something so spiritually elementary. Every year lifeless seeds buried in the ground bear life from the ground in the spring, grow to maturity in the heat of the summer, bear fruit during autumn’s harvest, then die and decompose in the harshness of winter. Spring is an annual, seasonal rebirth. Each week we start on Monday and work towards Friday night when we can take a break, end the week and start a new one. Every night we go to bed in darkness, enter the oblivion of sleep then with the break of light and the dawn we start a new day.

“Wait ’til next year.”
“Tomorrow’s a new day.”
“This is only for a season.”
“I just have to get through this week.”

God layers the Great Story with this theme of rebirth. The final chapters speak of a new heaven and new earth, and God says, “Behold, I make all things new” (btw, the reference to that verse was embedded in the the crux of my first tat). So, it should not be a surprise that Jesus tells Nicodemus that one of the basic realities and necessities of God’s Kingdom is a rebirth of Spirit, a new start, a new season, a spiritual new beginning. It has nothing to do with political affiliation, demographics, denomination, or attending church. What Jesus was saying was simple and organic: those facing a dead end need a new start, anyone whose spirit is languishing in darkness needs a new day to dawn, those whose hearts are frozen need the thaw of Spring, everyone who is dead in their sin and shame need to experience the power of a spiritual resurrection.

Today, I’m feeling the desire to breath new life into the worn out phrase “born again.”

Chapter-a-Day

The Natural Ebb and Flow of Conversation

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source: bitzcelt via Flickr
source: bitzcelt via Flickr

They were also to stand every morning to thank and praise the Lord. They were to do the same in the evening…. 1 Chronicles 23:30 (NIV)

I am continually learning. The further I progress in my journey the more I find that there are certain religious trappings and traditions that have no meaning for me, and so I let them go. I also find layers of meaningful discovery that add color and texture to my relationship with God and my spiritual sojourn.

One of the discoveries that has emerged for me in recent years is actually quite ancient. In fact, I have come to believe that it was woven into the very fabric of life by God in creation. I have discovered the connection between the natural cycles of creation and my ongoing conversations with God.  Just as there is an ebb and flow to the conversation between Wendy and me at different parts of the day, so there is an ebb and flow to my conversations with God. Prayer is not a compartmentalized moment, but a flowing conversation that continues throughout time. I saw an allusion to it in the above verse as it talked about the responsibilities of the Levites in the ancient temple.

In the morning my conversation with God is in gratitude for a new day, never promised, yet full of possibilities. As I wander through my day, the conversation flows into gratitude for daily provision, into contemplation of decisions that need to be made, of the need for strength, patience, endurance, and/or courage in the tasks. As people flow in and out of my day through phone calls, e-mails, and visits, my internal conversation with God flows into requests made on the behalf of others I encounter and my own responsibilities in those relationships. In the evening the continuing conversation of spirit ebbs towards reflection, processing the events of the day, of letting go of things I cannot change, and of gratitude for blessings that I encountered along the way.

That is just one day. I have come to realize that there are similar cycles of conversation and relationship which ebb and flow on a more macro level of seasons of the year, years in the life span, and life span in eternity. Conversely, there are also layers of the conversation on a micro level which ebb and flow with each inhale and exhale of breath.

Today I am thankful for the ways that my relationship with my Creator and Redeemer grows richer and deeper the further I proceed in life’s journey.

Chapter-a-Day

Steering Out of Unhealthy Ruts in Life’s Road

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The Road to Home
Familiar ruts (Photo credit: Universal Pops)

Return to your rest, my soul,
    for the Lord has been good to you.
Psalm 116:7 (NIV)

There is an ebb and flow to life. Things cycle. Relationships repeat familiar refrains. We often wander thoughtlessly from day to day, then wake from a daydream to realize that we are in the same place we’ve been before. If you’ve noticed, our life journeys follow patterns of our own unconscious making. Like tires that slip easily into the well worn ruts of a dirt road, we slip into well worn patterns of thought and behavior.

Over the past few days I’ve found myself in an emotional valley. I recognize this place. I’ve been here many times before. I’ve come to know that the depth of winter is a difficult seasonal stretch of the journey for me. Short, gray days give way to long, dark nights. The holiday hoopla is over and with it comes a certain physical, emotional and relational hangover. My subconscious links familiar sensory stimuli to painful memories of seasons past. With my guard down, anticipation for the year ahead is lined with an uncertainty that easily lends itself to anxiety and fear. Ugh. Back in the rut.

I ran into the above verse this morning and I heard in it the whisper of the Spirit calling gently to my soul. Return to the rest God has for me in healthy paths and patterns. I have learned from experience that the first step in progressing out of unprofitable emotional or behavioral ruts is to recognize that I’m in it. Once aware of the situation, it takes a conscious resolve to steer out of the rut, which may require an initial jolt of personal effort and energy:

  • Replace: Combat negative thoughts with positive affirmations.
  • Replenish: Do one tangible thing each day to show care for myself.
  • Refresh: Do something loving and unexpected for someone else.
  • Relate: Make time with friends and family who will encourage and fill my life and love tank.
  • Return: to familiar, healthy patterns and paths that have led to good places in the past.
  • Remind: myself daily. Without conscious attention, I easily slip back into mindless, unhealthy ruts.
  • Repeat: There are cycles and patterns to life. Healthy, positive ruts will not made by doing things once, but many times over and over and over again.
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