I was reading a very good book this morning, and I realized that if I ever wanted to write a good book, I would need to figure out what, exactly, I am writing about. And I would need to have a lot of things to say about whatever I am writing about. Then I would just need to write about it. It sounded like a simple enough formula: 1) Figure out what you are writing about, 2) Have a lot to say about it, 3) Say it in writing (I would add in, "with humor," for sales strategy). Then I realized something else: I don't think I could ever stay focused enough to write a good book about something. Unless, of course, it was a book about realizations... I might be able to write a good book about realizations... but whoever wants to read a book about that...

Get up and walk...

Bethany Dillon has an awesome new cd out. Danae Allen bought it for me for my birthday. Thank you, Danae...

This is my favorite song right now:

GET UP AND WALK

I have got no one to blame
Except if that someone’s me
I washed my hands, but just the same
My eyes confess for me
I come in filthy rags
You know I’m guilty

I wake up almost every night
Saying Your name
What I would give to walk in the light
But what I hide has made me lame
My face down on the ground
I wait to hear the healing sound

You break through my deafness
Swing open the curtain
And I find the courage to get up and walk
I forget my weakness
For You’ve answered my loneliness
And through the mud on my eyes
I can see my Hope has come

You’ll have to show me where to go
It’s been so long since I’ve used my feet
I got up today a cripple
And now I’m dancing
So let the power of Your move
Not stop with what I can see

[back to chorus]

I couldn’t walk
I couldn’t sing
I couldn’t love until You found me

"...that everywhere I am in Thy presence."

About a month ago, I was invited to teach an FYE class on the Streams of Faith. In preparing for it, I realized that there are many crevices and pockets of these streams into which I have not stopped to dip my own bucket. So I typed up outlines for the Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, Evangelical, and Incarnational Streams, and decided that I would need to keep one for myself...

At about 9:12 this morning, the prayer of Susanna Annesley (mother of John Wesley) was one of the last things I added to the Incarnational outline. Then I decided to add it to my day... Then, event-upon-event, a good breakfast with good friends, a somewhat disheveled but peaceful arrival to the class, and a slow reading of Psalm 139 to open... and I am convinced that He is with me.

Pray this with me as I pray it about 14 more times today. And remember that He is with you too.


“Help me, Lord, to remember...that everywhere I am in Thy presence. So my every word and action have a moral content...May all the happenings of my life prove useful and beneficial to me. May all things instruct me and afford me an opportunity of exercising some virtue and daily learning and growing toward Thy likeness...Amen.”