What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?

Looking in the rearview mirror, my husband and I discussed over supper not just what we did in 2023, but “What did God awaken in me this year?” And that went far beyond a litany of our feeble accomplishments to a liturgy of who He is.   

God calls us to much deeper than our accomplishments, but to pray continually, live faithfully, love well, practice grace, and trust Me in this.

God calls us to Himself.

So in 2024, instead of creating an elaborate bucket list of resolutions or goals -- what I want to do -- I am thinking more about what I want to be.  What do I want God to awaken in me this year? Who am I becoming?  I am considering the incremental investments I need to make in my being and relationship with Him for the now and the yet to come.

In his memoir Everything Sad is Untrue, author Daniel Nayeri talks about how his mom navigated their overwhelming hardships as refugees.  "But what you believe about the future will change how you live in the present.  That’s how she did it."

How do we view our future? On what are we staking our lives?  Not what we want to do, but who we want to be when we grow up.

New York Times opinion writer Tish Harrison Warren views this time as an opportunity:  "...the chief value of resolutions is not found in our success or failure at keeping them.  Instead, they help us reflect on what our lives are like, what we would like them to be like, and what practices might bridge the difference.  There is goodness then in the very process of making resolutions.  There is hope in the idea that we can change -- that we can keep growing, learning and trying new things.  This hope of renewal is the point of resolutions for me."

We are not stuck.  We can change.

Becoming calls for continual growth, no matter how old we are, a moveable feast.

Like every year before this, the new year is made up of ordinary days.  What incremental changes can I make today?  In what am I investing this year?  What intentions would you add to your list? 

This is what I am working on:

* Pay attention.  ...to have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2. 16

*Write something, read something, run something every day.  Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.  Ecclesiastes 9. 10

*Weave kindness in my words. ...that I may show the kindness of God to him.  2 Samuel 9.3

*Don't interrupt.  ...slow to speak. James 1. 19

*Do small things well.  Do not despise the day of small things.  Zechariah 4. 10

*Listen.  Really listen to others and to God.  ...listen to Me. Blessed are those who keep My ways.  Proverbs 8. 32

*Be present.  Therefore encourage one another and built one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5. 11

*Reinvent.  Reinvest.  Recreate.  Redeem. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it.  Proverbs 3. 27

*Ask questions.  Lots of questions.  ... Jesus spoke to him first, saying, "What do you think?" Matthew 17. 25

And when we come to the end of the year, how will we find we are different?  Will others recognize that we have been walking with Jesus?  And by what will we be known?  Not by our accomplishments, but that We are His.

And where do we start?  Not with resolutions, but living intentionally, composing something new right where God has placed us today.  

In his beautiful piece The Singing Bowl, poet Malcolm Guite suggests:

Begin the song exactly where you are,

Remain within the world of which you’re made.

Call nothing common in the earth or air,

 

Accept it all and let it be for good.

Start with the very breath you breathe in now,

This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood

 

And listen to it, ringing soft and low.

Stay with the music, words will come in time.

Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.

 

Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime

Is richness rising out of emptiness,

And timelessness resounding into time.

 

And when the heart is full of quietness

Begin the song exactly where you are.

 

A Feast of Books 2023

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

O     Of making many books there is no end...  Ecclesiastes 12. 12 

        And we are glad.

       Looking through the list of books I read in 2023, I was so thankful that I kept a list to remind me of these savory, delicious readings.  Each one was nourishing in its own way.  I found myself grateful for the faithful writers who slaved over manuscripts, putting together words, like so many ingredients in a recipe not yet written down.  

       And on those pages, bound between covers, I was amazed at the real lives that are portrayed, even the imaginary ones.  They inform us about others.  They reveal so much stuff about ourselves.  As I finished reading so many of these books, I couldn't wait to tell someone else, "you have to read this."  This year in books was indeed a feast.

       I also noticed that my books this year were almost equally divided between fiction, memoir, spiritual, and nonfiction.  And how those categories infiltrated one within another, spiritual insights in a novel, extraordinary memoirs both stronger and stranger than fiction, and nonfiction with words for the wise and those who want to be.  I ended the year once again with the last chapter of Revelation.  Reading through the Bible each year changes me.

       But some of the treasure is not just found in my list of books, but in the notes that I take, jotting down pertinent quotes, passages, images, and truths that have been translated into what I can understand.  I have kept those notes in a file on my laptop since 2010.   Some quotes make their way into this nightlytea blog and into my other blog Daily Scriptures for Busy People www.worddujour.blogspot.com. 

       And hopefully into how I live.

H    Here's my list for 2023:

  

           You Are My Sunshine:  a Story of Love, Promises, and a Really Long Bike Ride by Sean Dietrich (2022)

2.      How It Went:  Thirteen More Stories of the Port William Membership by Wendell Berry (2022)

3.      Letters From Westerbork by Etty Hillesum (1982)

4.      Timothy Keller:  His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen (2023)

5.      Prayer:  Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard J. Foster (1992)

6.      The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie (2023)

7.      The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (1950)

8.      Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (2021)

9.      The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo (2003)

10    The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller (2012)

11     Confronting Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin (2019)

12   Forgive:  How Can I and Why Should I?  by Timothy Keller (2022)

13   The Meaning of Marriage:  Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God by Timothy Keller with Kathy Keller (2011)

14.   Bird by Bird:  Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamont (1994)

15.   On Getting Out of Bed:  The Burden and Gift of Living by Alan Noble (2023)

16.   Stories of My Life by Katherine Paterson (2022)

17.   How To Human:  Three Ways To Share Life Beyond What Distracts, Divides, and Disconnects Us by Carlos Whittaker (2023)

18.   Louisiana’s Way Home by Kate DiCamillo (2018)

19.   The One and Only Ruby by Katherine Applegate (2023)

20.   In The Garden of The Righteous:  The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust by Richard Hurowitz (2023)

21.   A Praying Life:  Connecting With God in a Distracting World by Paul E. Miller (2009)

22.   Spilling Ink:  A Young Writer’s Handbook by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter (2010)

23.   Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri (2020)

24.   The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams by Daniel Nayeri (2023)

25.   Prayers of St. Paul by Rev. W. H. Griffith Thomas (1914)

26.   Elisabeth Elliot:  A Life by Lucy S. R. Austen (2023)

27.   Our Town by Thorton Wilder (1938)

28.   The Third Third of Life:  Preparing for Your Future by Walter C. Wright (2012)

29.   The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

30.   Run the World by Becky Wade (2016)

31.   The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo (2023)

32.   Prayer 101:  Experiencing the Heart of God by Warren Wiersbe (2006)

33.   The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (2023)

34.   Undone:  A Modern Rendering of John Donne’s Devotions by Philip Yancey (2023)

35.   Mystery and Manners:  Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor (1957)

36.   Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery’s Borderland by Scott Shane (2023)

37.   How Far To The Promised Land:  One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South by Esau McCaulley (2023)

38.   The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz (2016)

39.   How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks (2023)

40.   The Bible

What If?

 

Back in the early 1980s, a doctor at a remote medical clinic in Angola sent a co-worker on an errand to a city some miles away.  The doctor warned him to return by nightfall.  Angola had been recently taken over by Marxist forces. The road between the clinic and the city stretched through a jungle area where guerrilla resistance fighters violently opposed the new regime, causing it to be particularly dangerous to travel at night.

The co-worker quickly completed his business in the city.  As he began his return back to the clinic, his van developed engine trouble and broke down right in the middle of the volatile jungle area.  With no other traffic on that stretch of road at that time of day, he had no choice but to lock the doors, pray, and try to get some sleep, not knowing what awaited him in the night.

Strangely, he slept through until morning, caught a ride into town for spare parts, fixed the van, and completed his trip.  The doctor was surprised and grateful for his safe return, telling him, “We heard sounds of heavy fighting from the area you were in.”  The assistant said that he had not heard nor seen anything of the sort.

Later that day, a guerilla officer came to the clinic, seeking medical care.  The doctor asked him if he had seen a stalled van on the road the previous night.  “Yes, of course,” replied the officer. “When we got closer, we saw that it was heavily guarded.  There were 27 well-armed government soldiers surrounding it.”

The incident remained a mystery until the assistant returned to the United States on furlough, where numerous people on his prayer team, one by one, approached him and said that the Lord had given them a special burden to pray for him on a particular day.  Exactly 27 people had been nudged to pray on the very day he had been stranded in the jungle. 

I first read this story forty years ago, when it was included in a letter written by a young friend who was serving with an organization in Africa. 

What really happened in this story?  While amazing, the most powerful part was not the man’s protection in a dangerous situation, but that twenty-seven people were faithful.  When God nudged them, they were urgent to pray.  And perhaps, even beyond that situation, many hundreds of others saw that praying does matter. 

One man’s life was spared.  Many, many others learned to pray.

We don’t always even know what to pray for, or how to pray, the outcome always in God’s hands anyway.  But God invites us into His work and wonder as an active participant in His glory.  Would we even recognize God’s presence or acknowledge Him, if we did not pray?  Even in the unexpected, even when we don’t understand what God did and is still doing, praying may not change circumstances, but God always re-orders our hearts and tweaks our vision right in the midst of it.

We cannot remain the same.

Even one act of praying strengthens us for being aware of the next opportunity.  Not as an expression of our own power, but His.  As Joseph answered Pharoah, “It is not in me, but God…” Genesis 41.16

This incident in Africa, so very far away, so many decades ago, still reverberates in lives.  We are touched by those who were faithful before us.  Praying is never restricted to an isolated incident, nor limited to a short story, but echoes across eternity.  God knits us to each other.  God knits us to Himself.

What do we need to pray about today?  What situation?  Who does God bring to mind?  What if we prayed?

Even when we think there is nothing we can do, we can pray.  And God rocks this world because of that.  Someone, somewhere is affected radically by it.  Even ourselves.

God does great things we cannot comprehend.  Job 37. 5

The Other Christmas List

 

 

The Christmas decorations will soon be tucked away to sleep in cozy attic boxes until next December.  We are now consuming the last of the goodies on the counter, auctioning off the remaining slivers of pie, rationing slices of southern caramel cake, and grazing through an isolated box of Trader Joe's gingerbread cookies discovered way back in the pantry.

But tacked to the cabinet doors are still all the Christmas cards, the greetings, the smiling faces of family members we rarely get to see and friends who linger from so many stages of our lives, so many locations, and embedded in so many memories.

Those images comprise my other Christmas list.  Because I know far deeper than those smiling faces are often wounded hearts and difficult situations of which I may never be aware. But God knows.  And He has placed these people in my life for His purposes. They have been a blessing to our family in one way or another and a measure of God's grace to us.  Their pictures remind me to pray for them. 

I will eventually take down the greetings from the cabinet doors, but I will not soon discard the cards.  God calls us to pray for each other into the new year.  There are not many things we can do for those who live so far away, but we can always pray.  And that is never out of season.

 

I thank my God always

when I remember you

in my prayers.

        Philemon 1.4