"Here is the only place I can love Him."

I didn't mean to disappear from the blog. A few days of travel, a moving fully into summer rhythm, and I have found myself needing to take a hiatus from journaling here. I've savored time to do other sorts of writing, reading, thinking.

I've been reading Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, a book it's a special delight to hold and read since I've spent many a moment on Ann's blog over the past few years, and because I entered into her gratitude exercise a long while ago. I've been keeping more of those blessing lists in my physical, hand-held journal (which has suddenly felt deeply important to me again) but have yet to transfer any of the lists to the blog. Maybe this evening, or tomorrow.

One of the blessings of Ann's book is her meditation on time, especially the need for us to live in the present moment -- a pearl of wisdom it seems to me so many people have spoken to my heart over the years, but which I continually need to be called back to and to heed again. Her sparse, poetic language flows so beautifully, and I find that once in a while, a line just jumps off the page and straight into my heart. "Here is the only place I can love Him," was one such line this morning. She's referring to her love for God. And here -- this moment, this today. How true this is. We cannot love him in the past because it's gone. We cannot love him in the future yet because it's not here. HERE is the only place I can love Him -- wherever our HERE happens to be.

I say this during a week where I have thought a lot about the past. Time spent at my sister's unearthed old journals and letters I'd left in boxes in her attic two decades and a little bit more ago. Two decades does not seem like a lot of time, but oh the younger self that spilled from those dog-eared notebooks and tattered envelopes. How much I needed to sit with that younger self for a while and laugh and cry and laugh some more and remember her passions and mistakes and bad poetry and surprising snippets of stories. It was good to sit with her, like meeting an old friend.

I say "Here is the only place I can love Him," during a week in which the 95 year old woman who first led me to Jesus is in the hospital in my old hometown. Mrs. B. suffered a heart attack a few days ago; she's weak and frail but peaceful. The same night she suffered her attack, her 67 year old pastor son also suffered a heart attack (how connected are our hearts, I wonder?) and though frail Mrs. B. survived, the robust son did not. I am thankful indeed that my mother and father, who love Mrs. B. as they would their own mothers (she has truly been a spiritual mentor, friend, mother, grandmother, to our whole family) are there with her now. They're able to feed her and pray with her and just be with her, especially in this time when much of the immediate family must be away from her bedside to travel the few hours for the son's funeral. They're able to return a cupful of blessings to a woman who has waterfalled blessings on our family for so many years. And they're doing it in the hospital where my own dad spent a week fourteen months ago, which means they're getting a chance to see doctors, nurses, maintenance people who blessed them then.

I did say maintenance people. The head maintenance man was a tremendous gift to my parents when my father was in hospital. When my mother first met him, my dad was so ill we didn't think he would recover. My mother was at her lowest ebb and had been all alone, praying. She literally thought he was an angel sent to minister to her, his words were so encouraging, his countenance so loving. It turns out he has the voice of an angel, a beautiful gospel-singing voice that he uses to minister to patients. He sang for my dad over a year ago. He sang for Mrs. B. yesterday. "Because He lives, you can face tomorrow."

God will be in all our tomorrows. He is in all our yesterdays (a wonderful thing to know as I meander down this street called memory). But here...HERE...is the only place I can love him. Right now.

Whom Do We Serve?

"Our king is Jesus, not time; we serve him, not it."

This from our friend Travis, who serves along with his family as a missionary/teacher in Uganda.

Our family so needed to hear this yesterday. I think we probably need to hear it every day!

Passing it along, in case you need to hear it too...

Sunday Into Monday

I grew up thinking that Mondays were the real start of a new week. It was only as an adult, moving more into an awareness of sacred time, that I discovered what an important and necessary part of my Christian journey Sunday-as-the-first-day-of-the-week truly was. I need Sundays, different from the rhythm of any other day, different because I gather with "all the saints" to pray and worship, different because I truly try to find good resting time (even if only in snatches in this busy season of parish ministry and constant teaching). Sundays launch me into an awareness of new beginnings in a way that Monday morning never did. And thankfully, Sundays also help prepare me to face the beginning of a new work and school week.

Because Mondays have newness about them too. We face five days of a similarly patterned rhythm in our household, where we all follow (even if loosely) work and schooling schedules. I spend time on Sunday evening looking over lesson plans for the week: setting discussion forums for my online students, seeing what I need to read for teaching preparation, beginning to read through papers posted over the weekend (reading Hippolytus and Tertullian this week, responding to papers on early asceticism).

I also work on lesson plans for the sweet girl. What will we cover this week in history, science? How can I find more creative ways to engage her in narration? What's the new spelling list look like? What part of a sentence will we be learning to diagram? Where can I sneak more poetry into our learning time? Are we tackling anything new in math? (Two digit times one digit in multiplication this week...)

And who are we especially called to pray for and serve this week?

In a way, Monday is like the second new start of the week, but it's fueled by the first new start on Sunday.

All of which makes me glad that every day, really, is a new start with God, a fresh beginning. Every day, no matter what the calendar says, is new and a gift from him...and crammed fresh-full of brand spanking new mercies. A blank piece of paper on which to begin another chapter of the story. A page on which we can sketch a new drawing in our fumbling lines.