I should mark November 8, 2009 on my calendar somehow. For some reason, even though it was an ordinary day and in fact was filled with hard work (clearing my lawn and gutters of leaves), for some reason, my sense of God’s blessing in my life was more intense than I think I may have ever experienced. In fact, it might have been the happiest day of my life. Despite the greater than normal need for Ibuprofen (I had a LOT of leaves to clear) and the fact that I didn’t really get to watch any football.

No real reason for it really, I do have a great life, a great job, a fantastic family, and I got some really great help on my lawn from somebody really special. And I was just, for no real reason I can point to, so acutely aware that God was blessing me and pouring it on… It was amazing.

I hope you have a day like this soon!

Some interesting stuff I’ve come upon lately. According to a recent Consumer Reports magazine poll, we’re saving more, spending less, and over half of us are paying our whole credit card bill each month. We are spending less than we earn for the first time in decades.

Then yesterday, from a really unlikely source, Parade magazine (read the article here), we find that even as about 4 our of 5 of us have felt the pinch, and nearly half have delayed or cancelled vacations (a good thing if it’s stuff we couldn’t afford anyway), more than half of us are getting closer to our spouses, way more than half are doing stuff ourselves, and I love this… 30% of us are volunteering more!

In the middle of the bad news, some great great stuff! Your thoughts?

Yesterday, I interrupted my day to meet somebody that everybody kept saying I should meet. It was really cool, unexpected, and has thrown my whole week totally out of wack. (And I skipped lunch, too… which I can probably stand to do more often…)

There’s a price to be paid for being spontaneous and looking for the opportunities to just meet people and “do life” with them, but those prices are worth paying. I encourage you to stop and smell the roses, talk to somebody, take it slow.

It WILL cost you, but it’s worth it.

You all should take a break sometimes… I took a few days off, they ended up being, frankly, kinda difficult. (Stuff I can’t discuss on a blog.)

But it was still good to take some time off, and it was needed. Even if there’s not a lot of “good stuff at times like this, the time that you take a break is still a good idea.

Sometimes, you are recovering (I hope) even when it feels like you are only treading water. Sometimes, your body, mind and spirit are getting a needed diversion from your normal life even when you feel like you’d rather have a “diversion from the diversion”.

I do honestly wonder if Jesus took time off sometimes that felt less than restful or less than ideal…

Some dread it, some don’t.

Parents love it. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for it. Summer was all well and good, but I wanted to get back to the classroom for some odd reason. In any case, ready or not, today is the first day of a brand new year.

Everybody has the same GPA today. Everybody has the same chance to have a great year. Everybody has the same opportunity to have… not such a great year. Every parent has the chance to regularly and intentionally help their kid(s) to get educated the best they can.

It’s like New Years Day.

Happy First Day of School!

…and I’m trying to figure out why. I’m not sure who is out there who really cares about what I’m thinking… but what the heck, might as well learn how people are starting to communicate in this crazy teched-up world, eh?

Just so ya know, the hardest hit to get in baseball might be the triple, and that’s what Melky Cabrera got LAST to hit for the cycle yesterday. I was lucky that NASCAR got rained out so I ended up watching Cabrera, a 24-year old on a team of living legends, finish up his cycle (one single, one double, one triple, and one home run).

Go Melky, go! Can you even imagine what that felt like standing on third realizing you’ve attained something that most professional baseball players never even get to dream of!

That last hit was a solid double, but Melky wasn’t havin’ any of that, and sprinted around to third, just in time. Whatever it is you’re running for today, I suggest this… POUR IT ON! Run hard, run fast, and perhaps you’ll get to stand up at the end of it knowing you’ve really accomplished something… what a story THAT will be!

It is amazing what people are capable of. The potentiality that God has built in to man. 40 years ago today, we actually sent two people to land on another heavenly body. It is still probably the greatest technological achievement of man on many levels. The Saturn V rocket was the most powerful (other than bombs) device we’ve ever created… 1 billion horsepower! I mean… think about it, before the internet and memory measured in gigabytes and computer speed measured in gigaherz, we put men on the moon AND returned them safely to the earth.

God has built that same potentiality into you and me. I wonder what I’m doing with it…

Went to a family reunion yesterday. I realized that a whole bunch of my cousins (this was my mother’s side of my family) were no longer with us.

You just never know. So love your family today. Tomorrow is too late.

I mean… the fact is that communication is changing like crazy in our world, and I’m treading water to keep up with it. I blog occasionally, thinking somebody might actually be interested in my thoughts. I am tweeting a little now, too, and as cool as I think it is following some interesting people like Tony Morgan and Todd Rhoades and Charlie Hall, I tend to think it’s silly of me to think that people care what I’m doing or thinking.

But…

If what I’m doing or thinking is leading toward Jesus… is that really getting old? I hope not. I hope it’s getting new…