After staying late to do my early morning cleaning after a meeting last night, page 110 began a little later than most of my weekdays do.  Even with an extra hour of sleep I still got to work before the start of the school day and did a walk-through of the building to double-check its readiness for the day.  I had a few minor projects to work on throughout the morning but spent much of it working at getting the building systems ready for the inevitable seasonal changeover from heating to cooling.  It seems like there is always a period of time where neither a heat setting or a cooling setting works all that well for the full day and unfortunately, the system doesn’t do well letting it choose which one to run.

When lunchtime came, I went out to eat with a couple of the guys from church with the purpose of encouraging one another and sharing together about our individual walks of faith.  I’ve worked hard this year at better managing my work hours so that work doesn’t consume my life and have a negative impact on my family.  With early starts to most days, this means that my workday is usually done by mid-afternoon.  Today that meant I was home and headed to the riverwalk with my family by 4 PM.  It was a beautiful late afternoon for a walk and for photographing a variety of the sights of nature.  The cute little yellow goslings were out with their protective parents.  Many spring flowers were blooming, including a variety of flowering trees.  A few squirrels were playing in the trees and turtles lined the surfaces of partially submerged logs in the river.

As I thought about the day, and the turtles, I was reminded of the years I worked in youth ministry.  While I believe that by itself the number of youth involved is a terrible criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of a youth ministry, I always used a tag line or slogan of “Always room for 1 more.”  While the turtles startle easily and will slide off the log when they sense danger, I’ve never seen them knock each other off.  Even when the log surface appears to be filled, they will find ways to fit “one more” in what would seem to be limited space.  Most of us are not like that.  We like our space and often feel threatened by anything that shrinks or intrudes upon our comfort zone.  We don’t like to be uncomfortable.  We want our building systems to keep a constant temperature that matches our personal preference and we want a religion that allows us to be lukewarm with no increase in our zeal for God.  We don’t have room for “one more” in our life — even if that “one more” is God Himself.  We especially don’t have room for the stranger, the needy, the different, the poor, the hurting, the “you-name-what-you-don’t-like”.  Yet God says lukewarm is not tolerable to Him and if we choose to remain that way, He will spew us from His mouth.  He calls us to care for the outcasts and those marginalized in our culture as much as we care for ourselves.  He calls us to make room in our lives for Him and for the people who know Him and the people who need Him.  

I pray that you and I would choose a life that is not satisfied with pursuing our own comfort.  I pray that we would allow God to transform us into people who have room in our lives for Him and for others.  I pray that we would not be stingy with the resources that God has allowed us to be stewards of.  I pray that we live life in a way that let those who are seeking God know that in His kingdom there is always room for 1 more.