Someday I am going to write a book titled, This Never Happens at Other People’s Houses.  I have been saying this for years, usually using the name of one or another of my friends whose houses seem to be always clean, and who have never come home to find a tent set up in their living room.

For instance:

Objects Found in the Bathroom (over the years, not all at once):  rubber snake, extremely lifelike toy flintlock rifle, Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, a towel from a hotel in Las Vegas that no one who lives here (as far as I know and as far as anyone would admit) has ever stayed in, dog leashes and a can of fishing bait.  None of these match the shower curtain or the guest soaps.

Things you may find in the Living Room on any given day:  tents, set up or not, guns and ammo, fishing rods, enough duffle bags to outfit an entire battalion, rock collections, picnic coolers of all shapes and sizes, enough pairs of hiking boots to cover your average centipede, paper cases, and auto parts.  Lately this list has also included various configurations of mattresses and boxed springs and other furniture.  These all look interesting piled up next to the floor to ceiling book shelves and coordinate nicely with my Irish pottery collection.  I occasionally add fresh flowers to dress the place up a bit.

In our kitchen, there are over 20 travel coffee mugs, and they are usually, for some reason, lined up on the counter waiting for some caffeine deprived army to arrive and carry them away. This morning, hanging among the various family pictures, I found a picture of the Obama family.  I have no idea why, and if you know my husband, you understand this is a pretty odd thing to find on our refrigerator.

It’s not just inside the house.  Our backyard has, at various times in our lives housed a donkey, goats, and sheep waiting to appear in church Christmas and Easter programs (the only reason we didn’t get the camel was he didn’t want to get out of the truck).  For a period of time when John and his cousin Ben were about 5 years old, it was the home of a fully operational Worm Ranch.  Our driveway features a 1959 Chevy Pickup (it’s for sale on craigslist, if you are interested…if you get me alone, I guarantee you a great deal).  I once had to intervene to keep the men in my life from hanging the lighted (with twinkly Christmas lights) head of a lawn decoration reindeer on the side of the house.

Our pets are even, well, different.  At the moment we have no particularly unusual species, but in the past we have been home to the usual cats and dogs (including one cat who literally climbed the walls, and one dog whose favorite snack was underwear), and also various reptiles.  We currently have a cat who alternates between believing he’s a dog and being certain he’s a lion in the jungle, a chocolate labrador retriever who thinks he’s a lapdog, and a half-beagle/half blue heeler who thinks we are all sheep to be herded into one place. The cat leaves ritually-sacrificed rabbits at the back door.  The lab brings frogs in from the back yard to play with.

Our house has never been ready for a Better Homes & Gardens photo shoot, even on its best day.  If the Home Crashers ever come, they are going to have a heck of a time trying to decide whether to update the 1980s kitchen or come up with a living room decorating plan that incorporates camp stoves.

And I don’t care.  We LIVE in our house, and always have.  Sure, we have some unusual interior decoration, but we have fun, and laughter.  You can almost always find a place to stay and something to eat and someone interesting to talk to.  I used to have a wonderful framed picture hanging in the kitchen that showed an eclectically cluttered room like you could find anywhere in our house, with a caption from Proverbs 14:4:  Proverbs 14:4:

It seems like not so very long ago, this week would have been filled with shopping and backpacks, and signing forms and trying to move back bed times to school time, and saying good bye to summer…  Strangely enough, this week in my family it’s Back to School time again in a big way.  Student teaching, law school, seminary. But this time, I’m not in charge.  Darn it.

My children amaze me.  They are faithful, grace filled, brave, smart, focused.  Over the next couple of weeks, they all embark on new adventures in their lives, adventures they all feel called to by the God they faithfully serve.  For each of them, this is an exciting time, but for each the adventure calls for sacrifice, tough decisions, and the compromises and accommodations that grown up life tends to ask for.  I have no doubt they are ready for this challenge.  But, to be honest, I would rather be in charge.

All of motherhood has been an education in trusting God, but when they are small, you carry the illusion that you are partnering with God in shaping these little lives and hearts. God has put you in charge of the day to day details, and therefore you can pretend to yourself quite easily that you are in charge of your little universe.  There is nothing like being the mother of adult children to remind you who is REALLY in charge.

Jesus told his disciples that following him meant taking their lives down to the bone and putting it all in his hands.  He told them that their hearts were where their treasure was, and he wanted to be that treasure.  He asked them to give it all over to him.  I realized a few years ago that, knowing my heart, God wasn’t asking me to head off to Africa, or to risk my life, or to change everything around me in an instant just to serve him.  No….knowing my heart, God asked me to give him the one thing I treasured above all else – my kids.  God asked me to let him direct their lives and be happy as long as they were following him to find their way.  There are plenty of days when I would much rather go to Africa.  I have learned more about trusting God and following his plan by daily, hourly, putting these amazing human beings in his hands and trying my best to get out of the way than I could have learned any other way.

So, this week I won’t be packing any backpacks or signing any permission slips or packing any lunches.  I don’t have any carpools and no one is going to let me supervise homework.  I will be doing what all mothers do, and what the mothers of adults learn is the best, and only thing we can really do.

Like the title of the blog says, Mama will be praying.

It’s a rare day when I am glad my father isn’t around any more.  He died over 20 years ago and I still miss him.  But today I am glad he’s not here, because what is going on in Washington would give him a stroke.  He was a great believer in the nation he gave the end of his teens and his early young adulthood to defend.  He was an enthusiastic participant in the political system, as was my mother.  They brought up kids who were participants in the system, too, including one who ran for national office.  Dad was a devoted capitalist, cared about the less fortunate among us not as political tools and economic dependents,  but as people to be brought into the capitalist system he loved and respected.  He thought everyone should and could have the opportunity to succeed and that no one should be demeaned by being made a dependent on government handouts.  He believed with all his heart this was possible, and that there were good, strong leaders who would go to Washington and make these important things happen.  He believed that individuals and governments paid their bills on time, avoided extravagance of every kind, and put the interests of many before the interests of a few.

He would be having a stroke if he could see the sorry show our nation’s leaders are putting on right now – on both sides of the aisle.  The posturing and fighting for position, rhetoric, and air time would make him sick.  The self-serving nature of the debate, on each side, would make him crazy.  The lack of leadership and character would break his heart.

I know, because it’s breaking mine.  I’m watching his great-grandchildren’s future wash down the drain in a flood of lies and half-truths from a bunch of millionaires in $2,000 suits.  I am watching the nation he gave his youth to defend, and the rest of his life to supporting with his time and his money crumble under the weight of self-service and political wrangling.

If Dad were here, he would say “throw the bums out, each and every one.”  And I would agree with him.  What has happened in Washington these past few weeks is truly shameful.  Out of respect for my Dad, and for my Mom, and for myself, my kids and my grandchildren, I am contacting all those who purport to represent me and them and letting them know how disgusted I am.  They are just lucky Harry isn’t here to tell them.

I read an interesting article on CNN today, by a 19-year old entrepreneurial whiz named Dale Stephens, who is one of the first recipients of the Thiel Fellowship.  This is a $100,000 grant to entrepreneurs and inventors under the age of 20 to further their pursuits in business and creativity. An interesting aspect of this grant is that, for the two years of the fellowship, the recipient cannot be enrolled in any sort of academic institution. This probably explains why Mr. Stephens is writing about how “College is a waste of time…”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/03/stephens.college/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Dale Stephens is cocky and opinionated in the way that only a 19 year old who has discovered making his own money can be.  He’s found his path, or at least he thinks he has, and he has little room in his worldview for anyone who is not an entrepreneur.  At one point in his CNN article he disparages time spent in class:

Of course, some people want a formal education. I do not think everyone should leave college, but I challenge my peers to consider the opportunity cost of going to class. If you want to be a doctor, going to medical school is a wise choice. I do not recommend keeping cadavers in your garage. On the other hand, what else could you do during your next 50-minute class? How many e-mails could you answer? How many lines of code could you write?

It is true that not everyone is cut out for college, and that a young man like Dale, with big ideas and lots of energy may take one or more of his “big ideas” and turn them into gold in the marketplace. But I wonder about a world where the burning questions are about answered emails and lines of code.

The world is moving fast, and technology is changing our lives forever.  I’m o.k. with that.  While I am no computer tech, and I couldn’t write a line of code if my life depended on it, I love the things technology has brought us.  The speed of communication in the business and personal worlds is amazing and productive.  Social networking has brought whole new worlds of interaction and I welcome them.  But I worry a little bit about the tunnel-visioned approach to the wonders of technology.  Young people like Dale worry me.  They are undoubtedly out to rule the world with their creativity and innovation, but a view that answered emails and lines of code are more important than time learning about something outside your area of interest and expertise seems dangerously narrow to me.

I think, as the world gets more and more technology dependent and network based, we should be stressing things like philosophy, literature, art, and music, history, religion and social sciences.  These are all areas of study that stretch our minds, feed our souls, and renew our spirits.  Creativity and innovation are best fed by open minds, satisfied souls and fresh spirits.  Of course Dale feels like he is all of those things right now – he’s 19 years old.  But where will Dale be when he is 40?  What will be the “opportunity cost” of never learning about the way others think, feel, create, and learn?  This young man seems to think that “gathering to discuss, challenge and support in other in improving the human condition” will be productive even though those gathering to discuss have little or no knowledge of that condition beyond what they see with their own eyes, or have experienced first-hand.  I find it fascinating that he thinks learning should take place “as it did in French salons.”  Where does he think the ideas discussed in the French salons came from?  History, philosophy, and the Arts are what informed and fueled those group discussions he claims to admire, though apparently doesn’t know a lot about.

There is another thing that bothers me.  I am afraid that, as a society, we are losing our ability to do things we don’t want to do.  No matter how hard Dale and his fellow creators of wonder try, they will not be able to eliminate the fact that sometimes we have to clean up, do the paperwork and recordkeeping even if it is all digital, answer the complaints of our customers, and listen to boring facts that are nevertheless necessary for us to know.  If the emerging leaders of the world are, as Dale says, “the disruptive generation creating the ‘free agent economy’ built by entrepreneurs, creatives, consultants and small businesses,” they will sometimes need to do things that bore them, or that they don’t want to do. An inability to manage one’s own level of boredom and disengagement can only lead to an inability to relate to the world as it is and an ever-increasing withdrawal from reality.

I completely forgive Dale for being 19 years old and full of himself and his opportunities.  I’m sure he is brilliant, and his Thiel Fellowship may indeed produce the Next Big Thing.  But what will Dale be doing when he’s 40?  He, of course, sees himself as continuing to innovate and create, changing the world by changing the marketplace.  I would argue that, without widening his interests, learning from others, and broadening his view of what is creative, he will be burned out, at a loss for inspiration and success in life or in business.  And that would be sad, because a brilliant mind and energetic spirit like that is truly a shame to waste.

So, a well-known Christian group, one of those who spend a lot of time telling other Christians how to think, act, and –  most important of all, vote properly –  has come up with a new campaign – “What Would Jesus Cut?”  Seriously.  They have spent untold $$ manufacturing and delivering cheesy plastic bracelets to members of Congress with just that pithy message pressed into the plastic.

And, it apparently takes some serious money to get this message across.  From today’s email:

“We’re ready to make our call to action even louder. We must raise $35,000 in order to rally even more Christians. We’ll speak out on behalf of the hungry and vulnerable – via email, Facebook ads, and maybe even radio ads. We need you to push this over the top. Give today! Your gift will help us reach another 1.5 million Christians (if not thousands more).”

They go on to declare that “The cuts that Congress continues to debate will slam the doors on early education for 200,000 of America’s poorest children. They’ll slice food aid to other nations, including millions of refugees, in half – immediately. These cuts could kill.”

I find this  hard to swallow from an organization that just spent tens of thousands of dollars or more on plastic bracelets and Facebook ads.

Friends, the U.S. Government is broke, and it got that way in a great part by trying to take on the responsibilities of the church and the local community to care for the poor.  If children need early education, then the churches closest to those children should be running free preschools.  If there are hungry anywhere, Christians need to be putting their personal and congregational resources toward feeding them.  That’s what Jesus said to do.

In Matthew 22:19-22, Jesus talked about government and money. “Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

In John 21:17, he talked about what we were to do if we love him, “He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.”

As always, God is wise in this command.  Government is the single most ineffective delivery system of aid, education, or just about anything else.  About two cents out of every dollar budgeted for programs to the poor actually gets to a person living in poverty.  Along the way, a giant bureaucracy eats up everything else.  The only way I can think of to waste more money than that is to send it to some organization who wants to use it for plastic and advertising. How many refugees do you suppose $35,000 would feed if given to an organization that uses 2% or less for administrative costs?

Personally, this is very challenging to me.  I know I don’t do enough, don’t give enough of myself or my money.  I need to do more.  Most of us do.  Jesus not only asked for our treasure, he asked for our own selves – our time, our energy, our thoughts, our prayers, to feed his sheep and care for his lambs. It hurts my heart when a large, visible organization who wears the Christian Activist label indulges in self-promotion and misguided political involvement instead of just doing what Jesus’ asked us each to do.  Government will never, ever be able to feed the poor, educate the children, heal the brokenhearted, or bring peace.  Only God can do that, through his people guided by the Holy Spirit.  That’s the only way.  The rest is just nonsense.

Jim, Harry and Bob.  For all of us Cummins Kids, they were like the gods on Mt. Olympus, if those gods were Irishmen with Oklahoman accents and construction boots – bigger than life, forces of nature.  I truly think they don’t make ‘em like that any more.  Maybe it was the things that shaped their lives – the Great Depression childhood, World War II and service in the South Pacific, the explosion of business and lifestyle in the 1950s.

It’s not a surprise that their construction business grew from building houses and commercial buildings to roads to highways and bridges and steel.  It took something as big as a bridge or a section of turnpike to match their energy and work ethic.  I’m always a little bit surprised when I see pictures of them in coats and ties.  In my memory they are always wearing khaki pants and construction boots.

They were all brilliant and they could all do anything they put their minds and hands to.  They had varying amounts of higher education, but every one of them was a brilliant engineer and could tell you how anything on the planet worked. We all knew they could fix anything, and that it was useless to try and stop them if they decided to do it. They read and knew about the larger world around them, and they cared about it.  Being doers, they contributed to their community, state, and the country they loved in many ways. They weren’t ones to just sit and talk about it.

They weren’t saints.  They could be hard on their kids and wives, and always hardest on each other.  But they loved their families and their brothers, and their parents, and in the end everyone knew that. You couldn’t help but be proud to be their son or daughter, niece or nephew.

The men and women who worked for them adored them and respected them because they were the best kind of employers – worked harder than anyone else, never asked anyone to do anything they couldn’t do better and faster.  They were loyal and cared for people. They gave themselves to their families and communities. They cared about things like hard work, and doing things right, people in need or in trouble, and what it meant to them to be an American.

They all met Jesus in their childhood Baptist church, and though they may have struggled with some of that, they knew who God was, and God knew them, and I have no doubt they are in heaven right now, greeting each other in booming voices and slaps on the back that would knock lesser men down.

I am proud to be the daughter of Harry Earnest Cummins, Jr. and the niece of Robert Payne Cummins and James Brooks Cummins.  They were good men, and they all left big holes with their passing, and somehow an even larger crater now that they are all gone. Whenever I do something hard, look at a big task, or need to think big, I will reach for that part of me that came from them, and thank them for the example they set.

With Uncle Jim’s death last night, I am saying good-by to him, but also to them as a set, and that seems hardest of all.  Thank you, Lord, for these bigger than life Irishmen. Help me to live up to sharing their name and their DNA.

I got up at 4:00 this morning.  For some, this would be normal.  My husband gets up around 5:00 most mornings and is otherwise a normal human being.  I don’t usually experience the world before sunrise on purpose, but this morning I needed to be at work by 5:30 to greet the first participants in the Thankful Day of Prayer Vigil at Resurrection.  We do this vigil twice a year – once on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and once on Good Friday.  The chapel is open for prayer from 6 am – 10 pm, we provide simple prayer guides and a prayer walk, and people just come to pray.  It’s a simple, special event centered completely on prayer.  Over the course of the day, every single member family, over 6,000 of them, is prayed for by name.

So….at 5:30, I was sitting alone in the greeting area outside the beautiful chapel, and it was very, very quiet.  The candles were lit, the lights on the other side of the glass walls were low.  I was taken by how peaceful and beautiful it was.  And the thought came to mind that this sacred space is God’s House.

I remember being a little girl, coming into the sanctuary of the first church I attended, full of stained glass and polished wood and deep, quiet carpet and being told “This is God’s House.”  It was so spectacular to my little girl mind, that I assumed any minute God himself would peek out from behind the altar, or maybe step out of one of those mysterious doors on the sides of the chancel.  The church truly felt like the home of the creator of the universe, a special place to be.  We dressed up each Sunday, complete with hats and gloves and shiny patent leather shoes.  All the daddies had on coats and ties, and smelled like Aqua-Velva.  The mommies all wore special dresses they didn’t wear during the week, and jewelry, and hats.  We children were expected to keep our voices down, walk carefully, and be on our best behavior because we were guests in God’s house.

As I grew though, I think I lost the sense of awe that I attached to this sacred space.  Church became a place of fellowship and community, and was often in non-traditional space.  I encountered God in a personal way in an old, beat up house on a hill next to a big church that didn’t own one bit of stained glass.  Even that more or less traditional church building became less formal and more comfortable as the youth of the day invaded and made it our own.  I started wearing jeans to church, worshipping while sitting on the floor, and it was wonderful.  I experienced worship in homes, hillsides, and in stadiums. I met God in all those places, worshipped and connected with His presence.  If you asked me, I would have told you that the place didn’t matter at all.  After all, Jesus taught his disciples on the road and underneath trees.

But this morning, in the quiet, I felt the stirring of that little girl-awe in the presence of God in His house.  It is, of course, our relationship with God that is sacred, and if you look at it that way, there is no such thing as “sacred space.” But if a space is set aside for prayer and worship and connecting with Jesus, then it is sacred.  It is God’s house.  And if it is beautiful, and peaceful, and quiet, isn’t that appropriate for spending time with God?

My generation spent a lot of time rejecting the formal in worship, in community, and in our relationship with God.  We emphasized God as our friend, our  helper, our constant companion.  All of that was good.  But I wonder if all that friendly banter with the Creator of the Universe made us lose the mystery and the sacredness of our time with Him. This morning, when I came to God in prayer and had an overwhelming sense of being in God’s House, I was blessed with the sense and knowledge of the vastness of God, the greatness of God, and the need to come humbly to his house.

A friend posted a link on Facebook to a blog by Pastor Jeff Brinkman, a United Methodist pastor from Lee’s Summit, Missouri that summed up what I think a lot of people are feeling about tomorrow’s elections – no matter what your party, political philosophy, or involvement, one thing seems obvious – we MUST bring the federal budget under control.  Whoever takes office has to be focused and serious about balancing the budget.  The debt is serious, scary, and a burden to our grandchildren and beyond.  It makes our country vulnerable to all sorts of foreign influences.  It makes the nation weak.

I think the church needs to be ready for what this will mean, though.  If the federal budget is really going to be balanced, some programs that have provided for the poor, the elderly, and the unemployed will have to be cut.  There is no way around it.  I would hope that those making the budget cuts will look at every possible area of waste and nonsense before they start taking food out of people’s mouths, but I think Christ’s church had better be ready to stand in a very big gap as the federal government comes to grips with its own limitations.

This could be a blessing, both to the church and to the poor.  The federal government and all its programs is the most inefficient delivery system for helping the poor that can be imagined.  Only a few pennies from every budgeted dollar actually reach the proposed targets.  Most of the money is lost forever in redundant and inefficient bureaucracy and pork-barrel profit taking.

For years, the church has done the bare minimum for the poor in our own communities because, after all, the government was taking care of them.  If the poor in the United States are not to suffer tremendously as the government gets back on solid fiscal ground, the church is going to have to step up.  Big churches are going to have to do big things. Medium churches are going to have to stretch themselves, and small churches are going to need to band together and learn to offer resources more than they know they have.

Jesus told Peter that if we loved him, we would feed his sheep and care for his lambs.  What an awesome opportunity to offer those who are hurting in our community, people trapped in poverty, people who have lost hope, people who are frightened for tomorrow, more than just a food card or a financial hand up.  The church can do for the poor what the government never will – give them a REAL future with hope.  The church can dish up the love of Christ, and the hope of the cross right along with the groceries and the rent money.

Right now, while the political winds are blowing change, and the energy is building behind fiscal responsibility in government, the church needs to be building up energy and purpose towards being the blessing we are called to be in a hurting world.  We’ve spent way too long letting the government do the job Jesus assigned to his church, and  letting them do it poorly.  I pray that the body of Christ steps up and takes this responsibility to heart.

O.K….I know this is supposed to be the intellectual equivalent of admitting to reading paperback novels from the grocery store (oops, I do that, too. I’ll basically read anything), but I love Facebook.  I know I am not alone because the rise of “social networking,” is a favorite media topic at the moment.  I don’t have any  high-brow sociological reasons for my enjoyment of checking in on my friends near and far all at once – I just like it.  Here are some of the reasons:

• The chance to “bump into” and reconnect with friends from clear back to childhood who had somehow slipped away and are now rediscovered.  What a joy.
• Pictures of my amazing, beautiful grandchildren.
• “Conversations,” like one today between my daughter and some of her friends that consisted almost entirely of dialogue quotes from “Steel Magnolias.”  It was all over before I even saw it, but it still made me smile.  Girls, you know I love you more than my luggage.
• More pictures of my amazing, beautiful grandchildren.
• Ministry opportunities.  Yes, I said Ministry opportunities.  Chances to let a lot of people know about an event, a book, a movie, a song, or just a great quote that tells something about life with Jesus.
• The occasional opportunity to “chat” via instant messaging with friends I haven’t seen in years.
• Finding out all sorts of things about my friends and their families, complete with pictures.
• Did I mention the grandchildren?

I admit, Farmville makes no sense to me, and I blocked it and all the other games a long time ago.  After one of them turned out to be a computer virus, I quite reposting status statements of any kind, or following links without checking them out first.  I assume my family knows I love them even if I don’t “post this to your status if you love your son, daughter, husband,” etc.

I don’t understand the criticism of electronic-based social media as artificial or not real.  Any relationship, no matter how it is conducted, is as real and as personal as the people involved want to make it.  Not all relationships have to be incredibly deep and intimate.  Sometimes you can just enjoy the company of friends, whether in person or posted on the News feed on facebook.

When my mom had her strokes, and I was spending long hours in the hospital staring at monitors and walls, posting on Facebook about it let me reach out for, and receive, encouragement, humor, and prayers from friends all over the country and beyond.   When she died, it was a way to tell people who cared without the need for repeating it a hundred painful times.

So, when I’m not reading one of those grocery store novels, you may find me checking the news of my friends on Facebook, and sharing some of my own.  I’m willing to risk it for the sake of just plain fun and friends.

The Kansas River aka The Kaw is 170 short miles of muddy brown water that drains the rainwater and snow melt of the Flint Hills and beyond into the Missouri to the Mississippi and finally the Gulf of Mexico.  It’s only fame is that Lewis and Clark made a stop and short exploration of a few miles of it before following the Missouri on to the West, and a mention in the KU fight song.  I don’t know that many people consider its muddy waters beautiful.
I spent most of yesterday sitting on the banks of the Kaw, and have decided I love this river, and I DO think it’s beautiful.  Truth is, I tend to love all rivers.  Rivers are beautiful and ancient and mysterious and flow on powered by an unseen hand.  Yesterday I sat with the Kaw and let the power of that unseen hand flow through me, too.  I watched the light play on the brown water and it didn’t look muddy any more – it sparkled and danced.  I saw it stop and swirl and go on dozens of times as it hit bumps or tree branches.  I watched it feed birds that swooped down out of the sky and land-bound critters who came down to drink or hunt.

I find peace sitting on the river bank.  It is somehow easier to enter into the presence of God and be quiet with the water flowing in front of me.  That kind of quiet and peace is rare in my life.  I was alone all day, but never alone for a minute.  I thought I had come to do some serious talking with God, but I found myself instead just sitting and listening, just being.  All the things I came to say, all the questions I had  to ask, my complaints and frustrations, just flowed on down the river and I sat with God and watched the river run.

God has a place like the river for each of us.  He can make a place like that in the midst of chaos if we really seek it.  I don’t go looking for it nearly often enough and I am going to try to do it more.

Now I get to take that peace back into the bigger world.  There are things to do, people to talk to, challenges to meet.  My prayer is that I can carry that peace with me, maybe even give some of it away.   God gave me a gift on the river yesterday, and I hope I can keep it and share it.

Amen