Imagine the scene described by Vance Pitman in his book entitled Unburdened (and I highly recommend reading the entire story instead of my pitiful abbreviation here) where he describes a moment during an independent stage with his three-year old daughter. One morning as they were leaving the house, his daughter was walking with shoelaces untied …
Category: Spiritual Life
Surprise, Surprise, Surprise
If you didn’t read the title with a Gomer Pyle voice and if you are unaware of who he is, your life has been deprived. Please stop reading now, go to a search engine, and solve the mystery before you read any further. nytimes.com Continuing the theme from the last post entitled Surprise and Delight, …
Audacious Imaginations
On a quest to navigate what constitutes a flourishing life, one should expect to find numerous resources related to success stories from the athletic world to the business realm; however, one surprise on this journey has been the number of authors who recommend not only considering a strategic plan for how to accomplish one’s goals, …
Audience of One
When a phrase comes to your attention from three different sources all within a 24-hour period, it might be wise to pay attention! The phrase Audience of One appeared in a sermon podcast in the morning and two separate books on different topics in the afternoon. Discussing the Sermon on the Mount, Ortberg discusses how …
Dust of Your Rabbi
One of the characteristics I associate with accomplished writers is the ability to paint in my mind a picture of the scene they are describing, or it could be the turn of an unusual phrase that grabs my attention which is what occurred during the reading of John Ortberg’s God Is Closer Than You Think. …
Building the Wrong House
Have you ever been guilty of attempting to Build the Wrong House? Sometimes in my eagerness to serve or help, I start trying to help everyone and instead of following the blueprints God designed just for me, I let the Enemy distract me into building the house he created for someone else. In Banning Liebscher’s …
Martha, Martha, Martha!
For those of us who grew up in the 1970s watching the television show The Brady Bunch, we can hear Jan, in her frustration of being the middle sister vocalize, “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” With Jan’s voice so ingrained in my head, I must admit that every time I read the Biblical story of Mary and …
Masterclass on Life
Have you ever mastered a skill? If you use the Merriam-Webster’s definition of the verb, it means “to become skilled or proficient in the use of” or “to gain a thorough understanding of.” Adopting this definition, have you mastered any skills in your life such as riding a bike, driving a car, or speaking another …
Circle Not a Square
Novel experiences, like navigating the COVID pandemic, create opportunities to illuminate the creativity and flexibility of individuals and communities in surprising ways. Concepts once imagined as impossible become achievable and people prove themselves resilient and persistent. A willingness to consider strategies in a new light creates a new normal and life continues to happen. From …
Sunday to Monday Gap
Admittedly, my intrigue radar blipped when as the research for neighborly love and hospitality led me to Tom Nelson’s book entitled The Economics of Neighborly Love: Investing in Your Community’s Compassion and Capacity and his challenge to think about love, investing, and vocation in an entirely new light. As a professor attempting to guide emerging …
Flourishing @ Life 