Page 352 was pest control service day, so it had an even earlier start than normal.  As I headed out into the early morning darkness I could see that the pavement was wet so I anticipated a rather icy morning.  Instead of a slippery morning commute, I was surprised by an air temperature of forty-one degrees which kept the steady drizzle at a nuisance status rather than a danger.  It also meant that I didn’t need to put down any ice melt and I could keep my morning tasks focused on inside work.  

After the pest control service was done, I turned my attention to the regular prayer, cleaning, and building prep tasks of the morning.  This morning’s soundtrack in my mind drew from way back as I’m not sure when the last time would have been that I had heard the lyrics, “He is able!  Oh, He’s able!  He is able to make you want He wants you to be.”  The song was both reassuring and challenging.  It is reassuring to be reminded of God’s ability to accomplish His will and His way in my life.  It is challenging, however, to consider how deliberately and diligently I seek to be willing to be what He wants me to be.  And if I’m daily submitting to Him, do I accept that while a work in progress I am what He currently wants me to be?  If I’m not, what am I doing about it — or more importantly, what am I allowing Him to do about it?

As I did some of the cleaning tasks, a poem started to show up in my mind as I thought about the increased generosity of many at Christmas time.  I also thought about the events that we celebrate at Christmas and began to wonder what would happen if we celebrated the gift of God’s Son every day.  Once the building was ready for the day, I sat down and quickly typed out the words that had collected in my mind and thus the poem, “Every Day Christmas” came to be.  After publishing the poem on this blog, I turned my attention to the “Monday morning with God prayer guide writing routine”.  I suppose the poem had given me a head start as the topic of love as the greatest gift flowed from the poem and into the subject line of the prayer guide.  The famous passage from 1 Corinthians 13 about love lists sixteen different attributes that love either is or isn’t.  I ended up grouping those attributes into similar categories as I came up with the six daily prayer points regarding this greatest gift of love.

By early afternoon I had the prayer guide finished and remembered to format and schedule it for publication — last week I wrote the prayer guide but got sidetracked before I finished getting it ready to send out, so I found myself working on it on Saturday so it was able to go out Sunday morning.  With grays skies and drizzle, the view out my window was pretty empty all morning.  By mid-afternoon I had a couple blue jays stop by but they weren’t too willing to stick around long enough for photos.  After they left, a few cardinals stopped to check out the remaining berry supply and, judging by today’s photo, take a quick nap. 🙂  That wasn’t sounding like a bad plan, so I finished up the work I needed to get done then stopped for a late lunch on the way home.

While I didn’t end up with the nap, the rest of the day has been restful as I played some video games and spent some more time with the photos from this year.  As evening arrived, I sat down to write today’s page with a plan of finishing the day early and catching up on some sleep.

As I reflect on the day, here are some thoughts/lessons that stand out to me:

• I’ve learned that I have to set up calendar reminders or I tend to forget things that happen on a somewhat occasional, yet recurring, basis.
• Appearances can be deceiving.  Sometimes things are what they appear to be, sometimes they are better than they appear, and sometimes they are worse — but you really never know until you look beyond the appearances to see what actually is.
• Most Christians I know will agree that God is able, but do we live like He is?
• God’s ability isn’t defined by our timetables or desires.
• The love that we celebrate on Christmas day was given to us by God and ought to be celebrated every day.
• To celebrate the real meaning of Christmas every day, we will probably have to rethink what that celebration ought to look like.
• Love really is the greatest gift we can give or receive because true love comes first from God.
• I need to learn from the birds of the air so that I can rest contently in the presence of God.

Page 350 has been a quiet and restful day.  So quiet and restful that I never made it out of the house.  I thought about going out to look for snowy owls to photograph, but my wife had other plans so I decided to start going through the photos I’ve take this year in an attempt to select some of my favorites to have prints made.  With thousands of photos from the year, this will be a long project — but a project that won’t ever get done unless I start.  

One of the sections of photos that I made it through were the ones from the 2017 Christian Camp Leaders Conference last January.  It seems only fitting that a conference for camp leaders would include free times in the schedule to go out and explore the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains.  Today’s photo is one from a hike I took of Abram’s Falls while I was at the conference.  I am scheduled to have a prayer ministry display at the conference again this coming January and am looking forward to both the connections that take place through the material I provide and to some time to spend in the mountains with God.

As I reflect on the day, here are some thoughts/lessons that stand out to me:

• Sometimes your plans don’t coordinate well with the plans of others and you have to come up with an alternate course of action.
• When the year began, I was going to create a folder to put my favorite photos of each session into so I would have easy access to the highlights — but I didn’t.
• Putting things off is sometimes easier at the moment, but usually leads to a greater amount of work later.
• For me, photos provide a great reminder of the many opportunities God has given me throughout the year.
• Wherever I go, God provides opportunities for me to bask in His presence if I look for them.  Sometimes it takes more effort to miss those opportunities than to find them.
• I pray that others benefit through my being able to share the things I find during my times of pursuing God in the midst of His creative beauty.
• The times I spend alone with God are always a help to my being effective in the times I spend with people when I’m representing the prayer ministry at conferences and conventions.

Page 349 was a full day with a combination of usual Friday tasks, some tasks that I would not want to become usual, and even a task that I never thought I would hear myself saying that I did. 🙂  The morning began early as I knew I had a lot to get done before I would be able to call it a day.  I was thankful that there was no new snow, so there was no outside work to be done to start the day.  After a morning shift of cleaning and building prep, I made my way to the hospital to be with my mom so that my dad could hopefully get some rest.  There was some testing they kept talking about doing that dad didn’t want to miss, so he didn’t end up going home until mom was released at the end of the day.  They ended up doing the test shortly before noon, so when they were done my dad, brother, and I went to the cafeteria to get some lunch.  My brother has been having some health issues as well and as we were eating lunch he got a call that the doctors wanted him to have a test done right away.  While we were at a hospital, it wasn’t the right hospital for his insurance, so I made a trip across town with him to wait while he had an ultrasound . . . never dreamed I would be waiting on my brother for that, but in this case they were looking for a blood clot in his leg — which they didn’t find.

After some time at that hospital with him and finding out there wasn’t anything further they would do at this time, I made my way back across town to be with my mom and dad.  They still hadn’t heard anything back from the test, so I waited with them until the doctor eventually came in with the results and the news that mom could go home — the news that mom and dad were both waiting to hear.  After the “hurry up and wait” part of the dismissal routine and my sister prepared to take them home, I stopped to get something to eat before returning to work to get the Friday night cleaning done so the building is ready for Sunday.

With the snow and ice melt combination that winter brings with it, there was a little extra work required to the weekend cleaning.  As I worked, I was filled with praise and thanksgiving that I had the freedom to spend the day with my family in their time of need.  While it added to the length of the day, it also added to the joy and fulfillment of the day to help carry some of their concern and perhaps even relieve some of it because of the experiences I have dealt with.  With the cleaning mostly done, I sat down to write today’s page around 10:30 PM while some of the floors dried.  Once I’ve written today’s page and the floors are dry, I can finish the last of what I need to get done and head home.

My wife and I selected some of our favorite lighthouse photos from what we had taken throughout the state of Michigan this year and put together a photo calendar for 2018.  Those calendars arrived today and since I had no opportunities to take photos, today’s photo is a collage of most of the pictures that made the cut for the calendar.  

As I reflect on the day, here are some thoughts/lessons that stand out to me:

• When there is a lot that needs done, an early start can be a good idea but only if that early start includes a recognition of God’s presence.
• When God says that we are to comfort others with the comfort that we ourselves have received, we need to be aware of how God might use the difficult times He has brought us through to prepare us to help others.
• Sometimes we find ourselves doing things that we never thought we would simply because God had plans that were greater than ours.
• Sometimes we so narrowly define what we think something is, that when we find ourselves in the midst of doing it we think it sounds strange.
•  Photographs help me to remember some great family times as each picture I take and share has a story of its own it could tell.

Page 348 began early as it was another day with fresh snow overnight that needed cleared from the walks.  The sky was clear as I walked out of the house and the sliver of moon hanging in the sky seemed to beg to be photographed — so I obliged.  After clearing the walks and getting the building ready for the day I got a phone call that my mom was in the emergency room after an episode of some kind.  My dad and brother was with her and said they would keep me up to date on what was going on, so I continued my morning tasks with a mind and heart filled with prayers for my mom and dad.  As I took the trash out, the moon and Jupiter were shining brightly in the sky so I grabbed my camera to see if I could capture them together.  I ended up with a couple photos that had them both in the picture but they were too far apart to get anything that I was real happy with, so today’s photo is the zoomed in look at the sliver of moon that was visible.

Today was probably the coldest the temperature had gotten so far this season and the building HVAC system was not being very cooperative in heating the building evenly.  So, a lot of my morning was spent tweaking and fine tuning the system trying to balance things out.  One thing I have learned is that small adjustments over a period of time works better than changing too much all at once.  There were some areas where I could see improvement starting to take place and other areas that I will continue to monitor and see if further adjustments are necessary.  

By early afternoon I found out my mom was scheduled for an MRI and would be admitted to a room following that.  After wrapping up my work for the day I headed up to the hospital to be with my family and see if the doctors had any answers yet.  The testing so far had indicated there was no evidence of a stroke but also no evidence of what had caused the episode she had.  As I sat with mom and dad through the evening, I couldn’t help but think there would be a day when they would not be here to sit with.  I continue to pray that they have a restful night and that God would reveal some answers as the doctors and medical personnel do their testing.

As I reflect on the day, here are some thoughts/lessons that stand out to me:

• Even with only a sliver of moon reflecting the light of the sun, the snow cover helped reflect that light even further so that the darkness wasn’t all that dark.
• Preparing for the things that can be prepared for helps me be ready for the things that can’t be prepared for.
• Some scenes are just too big and grand for me to capture in a photograph.  Could be my limited photography skills, but I’m pretty sure it has more to do with the vastness of the God who designs such scenes.
• In many areas of life, extremes are the are the areas where danger exists.  Finding balance is mostly about moving Christ to the center and drawing near to Him.
• Big changes that are wrong are usually more difficult to recover from than small steps in the wrong direction.
• Sometimes figuring out what hasn’t caused an unwelcome event is a start in determining what did.
• Time spent with the people we love is never time wasted.

Winter has arrived even though the calendar says it won’t start until next week.  With fresh snowfall overnight, page 347 began early as I was at work before 6 AM.  And with snow falling at various times throughout the day, it was after 6 PM when I cleared the walks for the final time and headed home.  In between those two sixes were a lot of things that made my day challenging and forced me to deal with an ever-rising frustration level.  In the midst of it all I struggled to keep my mind focused on things that were pure and noble and praise-worthy.  The feelings of discouragement have followed me home, so I’m going to pause the writing and head to bed — some time with God and sleep should give me a clearer mind to finish writing this page in the morning. 🙂

Well, the next morning has arrived and now I’m writing yesterday’s page following some prayer time out in the crisp night air as I cleared the walks.  Page 347 began in much the same way — prayer time out in the midst of nighttime calm and crisp snow underfoot.  Once the outside work was finished for the time being, my attention was turned toward getting the inside ready for the day.  As I look back, I think part of the problem was that I got so caught up in the things that needed done with the arrival of snow that I got the inside of the building ready for the day but didn’t use that time to get the inside of me ready for the day.  The day was busy but it didn’t seem like any of the things I worked on actually were accomplished.  On some of them, progress was made and on others it felt like the time spent on them didn’t accomplish anything.  That is the problem with only being able to see with a temporal vision rather than the eternal vision that God has.  I become too quick to decide something didn’t work or was ineffective or was a waste of time, simply because it didn’t bear fruit in the season I thought is should have — the season of “now”.  

With overcast skies all day and the snow coming and going, I didn’t have a lot of visitors outside my office window.  There were a couple of blue jays, however, that did stop by long enough for some photos.  While not often desired for their song — their call is usually rather harsh sounding — I always enjoy seeing the bright blue color hopping from tree to tree outside my window.  God’s gifting in each person’s life is designed to benefit not only them, but the entire body of Christ.  Just as people often think of the blue jay as a nuisance bird because it doesn’t act the way a cardinal does, we often fall into the trap of labeling people as a nuisance simply because they don’t fit our expectations and we aren’t willing to look at them for who they are created to be.

As I look back on the day, perhaps that same attitude crept into my mind about the “unaccomplished” tasks of the day.  If the tasks I am working on don’t take place in the way I think they should, or in the time frame I think they should, it is far too easy to think something went wrong.  Sometimes it is probably true that things went wrong, but often it has more to do with expectations (whether accurate or not) that went unfulfilled.  Hindsight helps me to see that there were things that were not only done, but even some of the “unaccomplished” things were actually steps that needed to be taken in the bigger picture realm.

As I reflect on the day, here are some thoughts/lessons that stand out to me:

• What something actually looks and feels like is usually more truthful than an arbitrary label.
• Not everything will go as planned.  In fact, some days may feel like nothing goes as planned.
• Some days are easier than others to take every thought captive.  It is usually the more difficult days when doing so is more necessary.
• Sometimes I need a “time-out” to reset my mind on things above.
• Failing to begin my day with the correct mindset usually results in greater problems as the day goes along.
• Even when I begin my day with God as I should, it is easy for me to get distracted when I have to change up my routine.
• My definition of “not accomplished” is not always the same as God’s.
• God’s desire is that you and I would be faithful in being who He created us to be.

The living part of page 346 has been long but I will try to get the written part of the page done before I call it a day.  Fresh snow had fallen overnight, so I was up early to get the walks cleared in addition to the usual morning tasks.  The sky was clear and the moon shining brightly so I began by clearing the walks while I was still dressed for the outside cold.  When they were done, I turned my attention to the work inside until I got a phone call that I was needed at home.  It seems Susan had a major seizure after I left for work and the fight to come out of it and reconnect the brain wiring was indeed a fight.  By the time I got home she was fairly calm but it was another 45 minutes or so before things connected well enough in the brain again for her to be appropriately responsive.  Once she was cleaned up and resting peacefully, I headed back to work where a lake effect band of snow had set up and I needed to clear walks again before the school day began.  

When the walks were clear and the building ready for the day, much of my morning was spent catching up on some correspondence and messages.  The band of lake effect snow had moved along and the sun was out most of the morning.  As I worked, the brush once again filled with songbirds feasting on the berries that still hang from the branches.  The cardinals were especially beautiful against the background of snow covered twigs.  Today’s photo is of one of those cardinals as he held a berry he had just plucked from the brush around him.

Part of the correspondence I was working with today included a follow-up email from the chaplain at a correctional institution in Florida.  It seems my most recent email had made it sound like I had leftover 2017 Bible reading calendars that I was willing to send, when in fact it was 2018 calendars that I was offering.  I called the number in the email and was able to talk with the chaplain.  It was a great conversation to have as we were able to discuss both what I had available and what she thought would be most useful.  The short of it is that she will use whatever I can send, but she would like to see these calendars be an annual thing that could be given to each inmate wanting one — which she estimates based on requests for other materials to be around 750 of them.  I told her I would send the 150 calendars that I currently have this year and would work at raising the funds to provide the full number she would need for next year.  I will also be sending her an assortment of the devotional books I’ve written to see if she would find them useful in the ministry there.  If so, that could represent another test of faith to see how God will provide the resources to get them what they would use.

By mid-afternoon the events of the day combined with the early start had caught up with me so I headed out for a late lunch on my way home.  Susan was resting when I got home but has had light seizure activity throughout the evening.  My hope and prayer is that a good night’s sleep will help all of us recover and that the seizures would not steal the joy that Susan brings.

As I reflect on the day, here are some thoughts/lessons that stand out to me:

• Sometimes the length of a day has more to do with what is in it than with the hours it contains.
• Some days the living part of the day is easier than writing about it and other days it is easier to write than to live it — and then some days both the living and writing are difficult.
• Some days I question why I post these pages publicly but I suspect doing so helps keep me accountable to actually writing them — and the writing of them serves as a great reminder to me of the work God is doing each day.
• Watching someone in a fight that you can’t really help with is not a pleasant thing.
• God says our battle is not against flesh and blood and I think that it can be very easy for us to forget that and find ourselves fighting with people who themselves are fighting an enemy we can’t see.
• Even with the extra work that winter often brings, I enjoy the beauty that comes with it.
• I prefer written communication but sometimes a phone call that allows for immediate clarification can speed up the communication process.  I suppose the one without the other would be like spending time in God’s Word without praying or praying without spending any time in Scripture — either way, we would miss the fullness of what God wants to say.
• Some requests that are made of me are easy to answer because I think I can handle them.  The fun requests are the God-sized ones that I know I can’t handle and must trust Him to take care of.
• While I have no idea of how God would choose to make it happen, it excites me to think of 750 female inmates at a state correctional institution wanting prayer-based devotional material — and to have those in authority there thinking this is a good thing.
• Rest is often undervalued in our society.