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Creating Space When Your Season Feels Too Full
Life only gets busier. People told me that in seminary. Moms said that to me in the newborn stage. I knew it was coming in the pre-k years. Now it’s here. With three young and growing kids, I spend my days running from one thing to the next. I struggle to create space for my soul to rest and reconnect with the Lord. So I’m getting creative. It’s a work in progress to be sure. But I know I need space. Here are five ways I’m creating it in a hectic season. Get up early. I know this one isn’t for everyone. If your children wake up at 6am or…
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2 Questions to Ask to Know How to Use Your Time
Time seems to sprint while I try to catch up. Like running a race with my older brother as kids—I always fell a few paces behind. No matter how much I pumped my arms and stretched my stride, he’d beat me to the finish line. How we walk (or run) in our timed life on earth impacts eternity—and the lives around us today. As Tish Harrison Warren talks about in Liturgy of the Ordinary, how we live our one day—after day—after day, is how we live our lives. So, how should we use our time? The New Testament teaches us two definitions of time: Chronos: used to express the idea…
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Wisdom in Waiting- A Timeless Truth
In a world of instant everything, a third world country appears to be backward, deprived, even antiquated. They seem slow in their thinking, in their decision making, and especially in their everyday living. A person who visits these countries where living is harder, might verbally give thanks for modern advances while they secretly enjoy the slower pace. Modern cultures have life easier, faster, and more productive. Technology has advanced our ability to do more but sadly reinforces our tendency towards impatience. Impatience comes naturally to all who have a sinful nature. Just try to get a baby to wait when they are hungry or when their diaper needs changing. In…
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Time Out: Time Management and Wise Living
How’s your schedule? Are you looking for things to do? Are your days full? Or are you feeling buried by the demands of home, work, and church commitments? Commitments in my life tumble on top of each other in April through June. So when a drastic drop in temperature canceled a lunch picnic last Saturday, I breathed a sigh of relief. Even without the picnic, activity filled the day as I prepared for a dinner. I shopped, chopped mountains of vegetables, put casseroles in the oven and scrubbed dishes. As guests streamed in the front door, I was spot cleaning the kitchen floor with a wet paper towel and wished…
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Convenient Christianity
I love Southwest Airlines. Must be the heart logo. And their employees seem to love their jobs. Which is a pleasantry in a world where many airlines seem to dip their employees in lemon juice. But Southwest imposes one inconvenience. Passengers must check in 24 hours beforehand to get their boarding assignments—really a race to see who can click their mice the fastest, lest one end up with the dreaded middle seat. This 24-hour check-in process works great if you face a computer all day. I don’t. Enter: early bird check-in. For $15 Southwest Airlines will check me in automatically, which precludes the setting of an alarm 24…
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Christmas Eve Waiting
Your house bustles with activity. Christmas Eve services—everyone “get into the car.” Family gatherings and gift exchanges. Last minute baking. Today busyness abounds in most of our homes. But infused into all the hustle and bustle is a sense of expectation—of waiting. Tomorrow we will rise to celebrate our Savior. We will give gifts because He gave us the greatest gift. We will sing and laugh and feast together because ultimately He came near. But today, we wait. I like what C.S. Lewis said about waiting: . . . I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you…
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Are You a Spiritual Hoarder? Three Ways We Withhold Ourselves—and Our Stuff—from Others
Hoarder: “A word that describes anyone that feels the need to find, collect, keep, [or] pack any and everything because they do not know how to throw things away” (Urban Dictionary). Several years ago there was an entire TV series about hoarders. There are entire companies devoted to helping hoarders clean up. And there are even medical disorders related to hoarding. Innate within each of us—to varying degrees—is a desire to hold on to something. Hoarding is more than just stowing away our stuff in some dark closet. Sometimes it means we keep our deepest selves locked tightly within us. Here are three ways we withhold ourselves from others and…
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The Invisible Watch
Our son (almost) five year old son, Luke, comes to our church’s contemporary worship service with us. During the service he often takes his daddy’s watch and changes the time, hoping that he can move time along and therefore, the service along by moving the hands on the watch. He believes that if he changes the time then time will pass more quickly. (Note: this is not a commentary on the quality of our worship service – we are talking about a five year old, here!) What Luke is physically doing with a watch we often wish we could do with time as well. We encounter a time…
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What a Waste!
What do you think of when you hear the word waste? Trash? Food that is thrown out? Efforts that don’t bear fruit? Conversations that land on deaf ears? Addicts? Frivolously spent money? Unused goods? As this year of 2014 begins I have been convicted of waste in my own life. My primary problem is wasted time. I find myself busy on my computer doing something positive and productive, and then decide to take a few minutes to play solitaire. Before I know it, I have wasted fifteen minutes on nothing. The time is gone, never to be replaced. I am certainly not advocating forsaking leisure or fun entirely, but how…
