As page 310 draws to a close, it feels like it has been a Sunday.  I suppose it was getting up and spending the morning doing some prayer teaching at a church then spending the afternoon with my family that just had a “Sunday” feel.  I was privileged to be able to do some prayer teaching at the Buchanan Christian Church this morning and spent some time with a group of great people talking about developing a lifestyle of prayer.  As I teach, I always pray that God will encourage those listening as much as He has encouraged me.  

As I packed up resources last night to have them ready to take with me today, I thought about how each book God has given me to write has its own story.  I was able to share a couple of those stories with the group today, including the story of the first book I published, “Seeking God”.  This is a book of sixty original poems with corresponding prayer points written specifically for each one.  The book went from one poem to a finished manuscript in two months time as I found myself seeking God for direction and purpose in my life.  The poems were so unexpected and out of the blue that there was no doubt they were gifts from God.  The big question in my mind was “Why?”.  While the flow of poems was a great encouragement to me as a reminder of God’s presence, I couldn’t imagine them having any value beyond that.  When I submitted the manuscript to a Christian publisher that specializes in prayer focused material, the response back was that poems don’t sell and have no real value in today’s marketplace.  Fortunately, they gave me the name of a printing company and provided some guidance on publishing the book myself.  So, three months after the first poem arrived in my mind, a finished book was published and available in print and Kindle editions on Amazon.  I still didn’t understand why poems and couldn’t really figure out their purpose, but they were God’s gift to me and throughout the entire process I knew at some level that I was supposed to share them.  So share them I did and in the process God gave me the idea for writing a second book and then a third, and fourth, and on it goes.  I am convinced that none of the writing that has taken place after that first book would even exist today if I had not been obedient in both writing and sharing those early poems.  

The Bible says that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift and I believe that most, if not all, of those gifts are given with the intent that we share them.  I think many times when it feels like God is not giving us anything good, we probably need to spend some time examining just what it is we did with the last thing God gave us.  Perhaps we’re not receiving because we’re not sharing what we’ve already been given.  

A couple days ago I wrote about my worn out shoes.  Well, yesterday I received a sales flyer that had those “most comfortable” shoes on sale so when I got home from the morning of teaching we headed to the store to pick up a new pair and then we spent some time photographing some shoreline scenes along Lake Michigan.  It was such a beautiful day as we worked our way along the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.  The sun was shining brightly which added to the beauty of the day but made photographs a little challenging.  The brilliance of the sun is so overpowering that it is difficult to photograph the details of the landscape beneath it.  God’s Son ought to be even more overpowering in our lives so that His brilliance washes out any details that are not of Him.

I pray that you and I would seek to live and grow in a lifestyle of prayer.  I pray that we would seek to know God so that His voice and will are familiar to us.  I pray that we would recognize and acknowledge the gifts God has put into our lives.  I pray that we would be obedient in using the gifts God gives us for the purposes He desires.  I pray that we would know the joy of walking in the light of the Son each day that we live. 

Page 309 has been a busy day that doesn’t look to end any time soon.  I’m writing today’s page as I wait for the building to clear out after spending the last two hours making balloon creations for some very eager children.  The day began early with the usual cleaning and building prep before working much of the day on a combination of ICOM preparation, prayer teaching prep for tomorrow, and sermon prep for Sunday.  After learning my lesson Wednesday when I didn’t end up leaving the building during a 15 hour workday, I headed out to lunch today to get something to eat and take a break.  After lunch I began to get things set up for my balloon bending task and went through my backpack of balloons to see what I had left — as well as did some practicing to see what I could make.  The children began arriving a little before 5:30 and it was pretty much nonstop pumping, tying, and twisting until we began to close down the event at 7:30.  To me, the funny part is that I’m not very good at it and am extremely limited in what I can do with the balloons, but the children don’t seem to care.  They will stand in line and wait patiently, and be excited about whatever I make for them even if I have to tell them I don’t know how to do their request and give them the limited options.

As I worked in my office shortly before heading to lunch, a deer came up the trail outside my office window.  As I got my camera out and tried to take some photos, I heard a noise coming from the rooms next to my office.  Apparently, the deer heard it too as he turned quickly and ran off into the woods while I managed to snap two quick photos.  It is interesting that I can sit in my office watching and photographing them with ease until someone else shows up at one of the other windows facing the woods.  Even when I go outside, they will often lift up their heads to look at me and all I have to do is calmly tell them it’s just me and they will usually go back to grazing where they are.  I’ve even had them grazing on one side of the back field while I mow the other and then as I work my way across the field we change sides.  It is something special to build up a comfort level between the wildlife and myself where we don’t view each other as a threat.  It is even more significant, but often more difficult, when people can learn to trust one another in complete confidence that neither person will intentionally hurt the other.

As the building begins to quiet down and I reflect on the day before finishing the work that needs done, the words contentment and trust come to mind.  How often am I excited about what I get, even if it’s not what I wanted?  Do the simple pleasures of life satisfy us any more, or have we complicated life to the point where we miss out on the joy to be had simply because life doesn’t always turn out the way we want?  How often do we run in fear because we feel threatened when a calm, reassuring conversation would go a long way in building trust?  How often do we appear threatening to others because of our body language, tone of voice, or unexplained actions when we really had no intention or desire to scare them away?  Would having greater contentment lead to greater trust and would having greater trust lead to greater contentment?

I pray that you and I would learn contentment with what God offers as we learn to trust that His offer is always for our best.  I pray that we would pay attention to how we come across to people as we seek to serve for their benefit.  I pray that we would give others the benefit of the doubt when we lack understanding of their intentions.  I pray that we would learn to be calm in our approach to others as we learn to trust each other.

Page 308 was a day designed for rest and I guess I needed it as I slept until 10 AM!  I wasn’t feeling well when I finished work late last night so I wasn’t that surprised at how long I slept.  I’m not sure if the not feeling well had to do with extreme tiredness, trying to get sick, only eating chocolate and Doritos yesterday, or more likely a combination of some or all of those things.  Once I woke up, I checked messages and then helped Susan get around for the day.  She usually likes my days off because it often means that she can sleep in also.  After we were ready for the day, I fired up the pellet grill and put some pork chops on to smoke/cook for lunch.  The real food seemed to help me feel better, so with some great weather for early November we headed out to St Patrick’s County Park to do some hiking and take some photos.  The hiking and photo opportunities were both great and we enjoyed our time together as a family.

When we were done at the park, we stopped by the riverwalk in Mishawaka to take some photos there as the sun began to set for the day.  Today’s photo is of a flower blossom that was soaking in the remaining rays of the sun for the day.  Its created beauty was magnified by the brilliance of the sun shining upon it.  It made me think about the beauty that each one of us is created with and how every one of us has that created beauty magnified when the brilliance of the Son is shining upon us and through us.  We left the riverwalk and stopped for supper on the way home where we watched the sun finish setting for the day.  

As I unwind and reflect on this day of rest, I think about the times we feel spiritually unwell.  Perhaps we can learn from the times we are physically not well and see some parallels to our spiritual life.  Sometimes we simply become spiritually exhausted as the unseen battle wages on around us.  We generally don’t see the actual spiritual warfare that is taking place around us and for us on a daily basis, but we can often feel it.  At times the temptations seem to come at us in waves and we stand firm as we resist the attacks of the enemy, we eventually become tired and need to rest in the safety of our Father’s protection.  When we begin to not feel well spiritually, perhaps it is time to “Come aside and rest” for a time.  Other times when we begin to feel unwell spiritually, we find that we are coming down with something that we caught from someone we’ve had contact with.  The encouragement we gain from one another, and are supposed to give to one another, is an incredible thing.  Unfortunately, there can also be a dark side to what we “catch” from others.  Attitudes seem to be as contagious as the common cold and there are times we find ourselves not feeling well spiritually because we’ve caught discontentment, envy, greed, jealousy, anger, or any of a variety of other unwell attitudes from the people around us.  For me, I found I was catching many of these “spiritual diseases” from social media public newsfeeds.  It has been nearly a month since I’ve pulled up any of my social media newsfeeds, and while I am sure I have missed a lot of information that I would have liked to have known, I have avoided catching some attitudes that I would be better off without.  And then there are the times when we feel spiritually unwell because we’ve not maintained a healthy spiritual diet.  Instead of a steady diet of spiritual food, our prayer life becomes non-existent and our time in the Word is sporadic and without purpose.  We tend to avoid the things that would make us grow and only seek out scripture and prayer times that make us feel good and satisfies a selfish desire.  And just like the physical start of my day today, many times our feeling unwell spiritually is a combination of multiple factors.

I pray that you and I would recognize the times when we are not feeling well physically and/or spiritually and seek the proper action to resolving that feeling.  I pray that we would rest physically when we need to and rest spiritually when we need to.  I pray that we would know the incredible beauty that we have been created with and that we would amplify that beauty by letting the presence of Christ within us illuminate us from the inside out.  I pray that we would examine the things that cause us to not be as well spiritually as we ought to be and seek God’s help in resolving them.  

Page 306 found me at work early doing the morning cleaning and building prep while the place was empty and quiet.  Once the building was ready for the day, I spent some time going through correspondence from the missions we help support and then updating our missions bulletin board.  As I worked on that, I had an extended phone call discussing details of some prayer teaching I will be doing for a church on Saturday.  A few more boxes of books arrived today as I gear up for the ICOM display, so I checked to make sure they were printed correctly then added them to the collection to take to Lexington in a couple weeks.  So much of my book and resource inventory had been depleted over the summer that I’ve had to order some of almost everything for this conference at a cost of over two thousand dollars just for books and printed material.  Add to that the cost of display space, housing, food, and travel, and a significant investment is being made in putting prayer-based resources into the hands of people who will use them.  Seeing so many of the expenses come due all at once is something that both puts my faith to the test and amazes me at the provision of God as I do the work He has given me to do.

The rest of the workday was spent on preaching/teaching material as I continue to prepare for a first through third grade Bible class I teach on Wednesday evenings, the prayer teaching I’ll do Saturday morning, and the sermon I’ll share Sunday morning.  While it is a lot to keep sorted out in my mind, I very much enjoy the opportunities to preach and teach.  After work I grabbed a late lunch then headed home where I was able to unwind a short while before we headed out for a family hike at Potato Creek for the evening.  Today’s photo was one of the last ones I took at the park this evening before heading home.  It was a beautiful reminder of the satisfaction of a completed day and the peace that comes from spending time with God.  The entire walk, other than the three snakes that I didn’t see until I had run each of them over with Susan’s wheelchair, was a beautiful stroll through a piece of God’s creative handiwork.  

As I think about the day, my mind reflects on how God continually provides what I need even when what I want and seek after is different than what I need.  When I first began giving away the books I have written, people would often ask how I could do that.  My response then continues to be my response now, “It’s really not difficult.  The books have been God’s gift from the very beginning so I view them as belonging to Him.  So, they are His books that I am giving away at His direction.  When I run out of copies of the books, I simply go to God and let Him know I’ve given away all that He had provided.  So far, He has always given resources to get more every time I run low.”  It may be an easy response to give but it is not an easy response to live.  I can tell you that the more I trust Him and the more I see Him come through for me when I live by faith, the easier it gets to believe He will continue to provide whether I can see how or not.  Many times I think we take over ownership of the things God has given us and because we grasp them tightly in our hands we have no room to receive more from God than what we already have.

I pray that we would be faithful in doing the work God calls us to and in trusting Him to provide for that work.  I pray that we would be excited about opportunities to teach God’s Word to others.  I pray that we would not let the distractions of life keep us from seeing the beauty of God around us.  I pray that we would recognize the source, and ownership, of every good gift that we have received.  I pray that God’s gifts in our life would be held loosely as we share them and use them for the benefit of others.  

I guess the time spent late last week doing inventory and ordering books for ICOM caught up with me overnight as page 305 began with a realistic feeling dream that I arrived at the conference and for some reason had not taken any display material with me.  Panic was starting to set in as my dream found me arriving outside the conference hall without having packed anything — no display, no resources, and no suitcase with clothes for the week.  With that kind of start to the day, once I woke up I figured the day had to get better, right?  And it did.  The real day began with the Monday morning cleaning as I got the building ready for the day.  Once the building was ready for the start of the school day, I settled in to spend time with God as we put together the prayer guide for next week.  I eventually settled on the topic of power as I considered the “all-surpassing power” that God has chosen to place into these “jars of clay”.  So often, we try to do things in our own power and eventually wonder why we consistently come up short.  The power of God’s Spirit within us is designed to be revealed through our weaknesses.  It is when we recognize we can’t and allow God to do, His power comes through to display His incredible glory.  The Bible tells us of a variety of things that we have been given power for.  Each day in the upcoming prayer guide will focus on a different purpose behind the power God has made available to us.

The prayer guide development took most of the morning.  After it was done I turned my attention to my Wednesday evening first through third grade class and then spent time working on sermon development for a message I’ll share at the North Wayne Mennonite Church this coming Sunday.  The last time I was there, I began a character study series on “Living as the Lord’s Servant” that will look at various Bible characters that are specifically referred to as the Lord’s servant.  The first message looked at the example of Abraham with the focus being the Lord’s servant obeys.  The message I’m working on for this weekend is “Living as a HUMBLE Servant” as we will consider the life of Moses.  Humility is a characteristic that we generally don’t pursue naturally.  To live a humble life usually requires intentional effort to overcome and get rid of pride.  If we desire to be the Lord’s servant in the manner He would desire, we must make a deliberate effort to remove pride from our lives and seek to live in complete humility.  As the afternoon slipped away, I put the sermon work on simmer and headed home for the day.  

I pray that you and I would live lives that are prepared for the work God has called us to.  I pray that we would take inventory of the resources God has put in our lives for the benefit of others.  I pray that we would recognize the incredible power that is available to us through the Spirit of God which lives within us.  I pray that we would live with the knowledge of God’s desire to work with great power through our weaknesses.  I pray that empty ourselves of all pride and seek to live with humility in complete service to God.

Page 304 began with rain, which brought with it temperatures that were much cooler than yesterday.  Today not only looked like fall, it felt like fall.  The day included time at church for much of the morning, followed by lunch, some rest, and taking some fun photos at the request of my niece.  I have said numerous times that I don’t like photographing people, that doing so feels very awkward to me.  After a couple fun photo shoots yesterday and today, I may have to modify that statement to I don’t like to photograph people without their intentional invitation to invade what, to me, is their personal space.  It is not that I am physically in space that most people would consider private, but rather it feels to me like I have stepped even beyond that physical closeness as I peer through my camera viewfinder.  After the photo shoot was done, I spent some time sorting through the shots that were taken and then it was time to sit down and work at the writing of today’s page.

As I’ve sat here for the past hour thinking about what to write and what not to write, I’ve been reflecting on the sermon David shared this morning as part of a series from Nehemiah.  One point of the sermon focused on the reminder of Nehemiah to the people of Jerusalem, and to us, to remember our commitments.  In an era when a person’s word seems to mean less and less with each passing day, it is still disheartening when our commitments to God and one another are not given the respect they ought to have.  Often we make promises and commitments, but our willingness to set them aside for the sake of accomplishing our own agenda makes it appear they were hollow from the very beginning.  Sometimes we are simply hasty in making commitments and then we find ourselves so deep into actions of our own doing that we feel there is no way to go back and honor the word we had given.  

As I thought about this issue, my mind reflected on the piano music played by a young lady during the communion time this morning.   There were a few spots in the music that seemed to cause difficulty in the flow of the song being played.  I suppose while some may have found it distracting during the communion time, I found her approach to these “rough spots” rather refreshing and appropriate for the time at hand.  It seems that as we age and become proficient at life, we also become good at “glossing over” our mistakes in ways that make the casual observer believe they don’t even exist.  We become so good at it that we may even convince ourselves that those lapses of commitment don’t exist.  But that isn’t what a seventh grade piano student does.  No, instead of pretending the mistake didn’t happen, she went back to point where she knew she was on the right notes and proceeded from there to find the right notes that had been missed the first time through.  In a way, that is part of what the communion time is as each week we remember the Lord’s death, burial, and resurrection.  It is a time when we are able to acknowledge the mistakes, the sin, that is present in our life, and choose to go back to the cross where we find the correct beginning point to start fresh in living the appropriate notes of life.  God’s desire is that we would return to Him when we discover we have failed in the keeping of our word when it comes to our relationship with Him and with one another.  He is the beginning point for right living and is constantly calling for us to remember our commitment to Him.  

I pray that you and I would learn to swallow our pride and return to God when we find ourselves distant from the commitments we have made.  I pray that we would reject the temptation to “gloss over” our failures to keep our word.  I pray that we would not only promise to honor God with our words, but that our follow-through to that commitment would honor Him as well.

Page 303 was a good day to spend with family and enjoy some unseasonably warm temperatures.  It was good to sleep in a bit and get the day started slowly.  Once we were all up and around, our first stop was at Potato Creek State Park where we took some photos and hiked almost 3 miles as we enjoyed the time together taking in the beauty of creation.  After our hike, it was time for lunch and then a stop at the house to transfer the morning photos to the computer and recharge cameras.  After that, a good part of the afternoon was spent taking engagement photos for my niece and her fiance.  It was a fun afternoon being reminded of young love and attempting to capture that in photos.  It was great to see them laughing and enjoying life together.  The last part of the photo shoot was on my parents’ farm where I grew up, so I stuck around and shot some scene photos there.  When we were done shooting photos, we headed out to dinner with my mom and dad to wrap up our day before making our way home to go through the afternoon’s photos.

Today’s photo is from the farm pond that was our family’s swimming pool, fishing hole, and ice skating rink for all of my childhood years.  There have also been a lot of family picnics that have taken place around this pond over the years.  In multiple ways, today seemed to have a theme of family.  From the family hike with my wife and daughter to the family photo session of my niece to the family dinner with my parents, God used multiple opportunities to show the importance of having, and being, family.  I realize that I am fortunate as not everyone has a family that they are proud of and not everyone has a family that is proud of them.  Sometimes that is because of the choices of our family and sometimes it is because of our choices and sometimes it is caused by circumstances beyond the control of any of us.  The good news is that regardless of what our family on earth looks like, God has called us to be a part of His family — a family that we can be proud of and a family that is proud to have us as a part.  God has adopted us, not only as sons and daughters, but as heirs to the promise of an eternal dwelling with Him.  It’s not that we are simply allowed to “tag along” for family events, we become actual family members with all of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of every other family member.  We usually like the first two of those parts of being a family but the third part we’re often not that fond of.  Yet it is the responsibilities that identify us as a legitimate part of a family, often even more so than any rights and privileges could.

I pray that you and I would understand how the families we are a part of, and have been a part of during our life, have influenced how we see God’s family.  I pray that we would live as legitimate children of God as we take hold of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities He has given us.