Archive for the ‘Who knows?’ Category
Finding Our Route
How did the tree get lost in the woods?
He couldn’t find his route.
We may not be trees, but we spend a lot of time searching for a way forward. Sometimes the best choice is simply to pick a direction and start moving. Other times, when we’re truly lost, the wiser course is to stop, sit down, and take stock.
That’s the trouble with life: for almost every situation, there’s more than one plausible answer. Knowledge alone doesn’t always point the way. We need wisdom.
But what is wisdom? I believe it grows out of knowledge and experience together. Yet sometimes it comes as more than the sum of those parts. Sometimes Providence stirs the pot, and God lays a finger in the pudding. And when He does, a path we never imagined clears before us—one that leads not to despair, but to surprising and blessed results.
Roundabout
A funeral procession circled the roundabout, bound for the cemetery. An impatient driver nosed in, cut between the mourners’ cars, and darted out the other side. The only one not in a hurry was the passenger in the hearse.
We pretend life gives us two choices: hurry, or not. Yet most of us choose hurry and excuse it with refrigerator wisdom: Stop and smell the roses. We don’t. We grumble at those who slow us down, and bristle at those who outpace us.
They say we live in constant change. I wonder if nothing changes—because we never pause to notice. Children leap from infancy to adulthood, and we miss the quiet growth—or quiet loss—of the spirit. We hurry to work, hurry home, hurry on.
And then, in the end, we arrive at the one appointment that never runs late.
The God who receives us is never in a hurry.
Tell Me About It
O God Almighty—
You must see this endlessly:
our jagged apologies,
our letters unsent,
our bruised words
and unnamed wounds.
How do You hold it?
All these lives
turning like loose pages in Your wind.
I am only one of them,
stumbling through shame and bewilderment.
Tell me about it, Lord.
Tell me how You bear it
without breaking.
And as You tell me,
teach me how to let go
what I cannot mend.
Do Your Duty
Every citizen has a duty to perform. Some of us choose to fulfill that through military service. When someone learns I am a veteran, they often say, “Thank you for your service.”
I should probably reply, “It was an honor.” But I don’t. I pause.
Because truthfully, I feel a mix of embarrassment and frustration—embarrassment that I don’t quite know how to receive the thanks, and frustration that such words sometimes seem to serve as a kind of inoculation, as if my service relieves others of the duty we all share.
What I wish I could say is this: “Don’t thank me as though my service absolves you. Do your duty too.”
Even better, I would love to hear someone say:
“Meeting a veteran reminds me that I also have a duty to my country, my community, my neighbors. Here’s one way I’ve been living that duty… Thank you for reminding me.”
Because service, after all, was never meant to be mine alone. It belongs to us all.
Experience, Faith, and Belief
Belief, faith, and experience are often confused, but they are not the same.
Belief is assent of the mind—accepting doctrines or creeds. It gives structure, but can become brittle. Faith is entrustment of the heart—leaning one’s life into God, even without proof or reward. It endures when belief falters. Experience is lived encounter—moments of grief, beauty, or awe that ground us in reality and sometimes surprise us with grace.
Each on its own is incomplete. Belief without experience grows sterile. Experience without belief becomes chaotic. Faith without experience risks turning into grim endurance.
But when the three converge—belief giving shape, experience giving weight, and faith sustaining trust—we find something resilient enough to face both desolation and amazement.
For me, in the long illness and death of my wife, it was not belief that carried me, nor even faith as I had once preached it. It was experience—a haunting sense of pervasive good in a world otherwise hostile—that became the soil where faith could live.
On a whim... 