Posts with the tag “monday-reflection”

Most of us make our best choices when someone is watching. But the choices that actually shape the people around us are usually the ones nobody sees. Joshua made his declaration publicly. But it started privately. You cannot say as for me and my household in front of a crowd if you have not already settled it alone. Someone in your household is taking notes. They always are.  Read More

Most of us bounce between two errors. We make God small enough to be manageable. Or we make ourselves so small in the scope of everything that we stop believing our lives matter to Him. The Psalm holds both things at once. The heavens are vast. God made them. And He is mindful of you. You are not the center of the universe. And you are not lost in it either. You are known inside it.  Read More

Most of us have inherited a story about our family that we have never examined. Not the facts. The interpretation. The unspoken rules about what is safe to talk about and what gets avoided. The wound that became a tradition. Jeremiah says God forgives and remembers no more. That is not just a promise about your sin. It is a model for how you handle someone else's.  Read More

You are not just in your own story. You are in someone else's story too. There is a person in your world right now who needs what you have learned, what you survived, what you figured out the hard way. The question is whether you are willing to invest in someone who will fly farther than you did without crediting the runway you built for them.  Read More

Most of us have years we have quietly written off as the price of getting to where we are now. But Joel says repay. God is not just moving you past the lost years. He is moving you through them. The locust years are part of the material He is working with. Your story is not behind schedule. It is still being written.  Read More

Summer at the Movies | Monday Reflection | Week 3"As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him." — Psalm 103:13 Sunday you heard about George Banks learning the hard way that the small moments were the ones that mattered most. Not the big events. The Tuesday evenings. The ordinary Saturdays. The things that sneaked up on him and grabbed hold before h...  Read More

Most of us have something we stopped reaching for after a significant loss. A dream that got attached to someone or something that is no longer here. When they left the dream felt like it left with them. But Isaiah says God will carry you. Present tense. Still moving. Still sustaining. The adventure did not die with the loss. It was waiting on the other side of it.  Read More

Most of us have been quietly talked out of our own contribution. Not by one dramatic moment but by a thousand small signals from a culture that celebrates the new and tolerates the experienced. But the Psalm says fresh and green in old age. Not in spite of the years. Because of them. You are not overqualified for what is next. You are precisely qualified.  Read More

Nobody in the middle of a contraction quits having the baby. The contraction does not mean the birth is not coming. It means the birth is getting closer. The intensity is not evidence that something is going wrong. It is evidence that something is about to arrive. Most of us are carrying something this week that feels too heavy for where we are in the story. That is not the end. That is the contraction. Stay in the room.  Read More

Noah warned for one hundred and twenty years. And the thing that should stop us cold is not the flood. It is the patience. One hundred and twenty years of an open door held open longer than anyone had a right to expect. God's patience is still being mistaken for God's indifference. The warning has been sitting in the background long enough to start sounding like background noise. But the warning is the mercy. And every day the door is still open is another day someone can walk through it.  Read More

Most of us have spent our whole Christian lives with a vague picture of what we are actually waiting for. Heaven. Something nice. Something far from here. But the prophets were not vague. They described a capital city, a real table, nations stopping their wars, the blind seeing as a matter of course. Not escape from this world but the best possible version of it under the best possible King. The question Monday is asking: are you building your life on something that survives the trumpet?  Read More

For some of you yesterday was genuinely good. For some of you it was hard in ways you did not fully advertise. The empty chair. The complicated relationship a Hallmark holiday does not fix. The grief that does not take Sundays off just because everyone around you is celebrating. All of that is allowed. God heals the brokenhearted. Not the ones who performed gratitude correctly. The brokenhearted. He is already close.  Read More

Yesterday you went somewhere and handed something to someone. You showed up for someone who needed it. And Jesus says you were looking at Him the whole time. The righteous in Matthew 25 were surprised. They did not know they were serving Jesus. They were just showing up. The service project is over but the posture does not have to be. Resurrection living is not an event. It is a direction you keep walking in.  Read More

Peter said he loved Jesus three times. Every time Jesus responded the same way. Not good, I forgive you. He said feed my lambs. The restoration and the assignment arrived in the same moment. You are loved and you are sent. Most of us have accepted the love and are still sitting on the beach. Love for Jesus always has a direction. And it always moves toward someone else.  Read More