"Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting,
as it has been found difficult and left untried."
G.K. Chesterton

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Life's Small Blessings...

Last week while riding my bike to work I was struck with a small but very real blessing of the Lord. As I usually do when getting the bike ready for a ride, I was loading up my “trunk” with my change of work clothes and whatever and noticed that my little hyper-blinking light that I have on the rear of the bike for low light conditions was missing its lens. The light was operable, but exposed. I looked around the bike and couldn’t find it. “Dang,” I thought to myself as I mounted up and set out for the church office, “now I need to replace that thing.” As I rode, my mind was wondering whether I could make something to fix the problem, use a plastic bag, red tape, who knows. For whatever reason, it just bummed me; I found myself rather disappointed.

But just then, I kid you not, when cutting between two rocks near the Centennial Trail, what do I look down and see? There they are: the lens and reflector, sitting there on one of the rocks, clear as day. Someone must have seen them on the ground (I fell there the prior week...it’s a funny) and put them in view, presumably hoping they’d be found by their owner.

The skeptic might say that this was all coincidence and that someone just did the right thing trying to help out, but I think it was so much more than that—I think it was God. And further than that, I think God is doing these kinds of things all the time, we just don’t care to acknowledge it. We seem to prefer the hollow language of “coincidence” or “by chance.”

When you get faced with an opportunity, do the right thing. You never know when God will turn it into one of his small blessings for someone...

Lookin’ Up, Pastarod

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

My Wife is Amazing...

This Monday through Wednesday my wife is on retreat and I'm so glad she went! Well, sort of...I know it's really great for her and I've been encouraging her to get away to center on the Lord with no distractions. I know in my world this is so critical...it's all part of the "sustainable pace" we're trying to set for life.

But running the whole show at home reminds me how my wife is so amazing...

You see, I promised her I'd "be her" at home for the kids these three days...I'd make sure they stayed on-task, cook, clean, solve the fights, tuck the little ones and fight the older ones to bed and particularly, run them all around to all their various gigs. Now I've followed her carefully-written "matrix" of scheduled activities, and I'm happy to say that it's all going well. And in-between all of this, I've been able to actually get quite a bit done for work.

But wow, does she make alot happen! I'm so thankful for her capabilities, demonstrated in selfless service to me and the girls. Where would we be without her?

Mothers of the world, I salute you!

Lookin' Up, Pastarod