Love and Destiny

Love is absolutely vital for human life.  Our deepest nature, consciously and unconsciously, searches for love, and our hearts relentlessly desire love and are incessant and assiduous to encounter love's enchanted destiny.  Love is the one force God placed in our world able to rouse everything within us; it's an enormous and astonishing presence that does not permit our lives to linger in the lowlands of complacency – basins leading to an existence of fractional fulfillment.

Love is an awakening and exploration of the rich and opaque landscape of life, pushing us to places we can seldom go on our own.  When love awakens in our lives, in the night of our hearts, the dawn of destiny breaks within us, for love alone is literate in the world of origin; it's the force God gave us to decipher providence, enabling us to reach destiny.  This is beautifully illustrated in the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire, a story of two orphaned brothers and one abandoned girl raised in the slums of Mumbai. 

Slumdog Millionaire is a moving and gripping story of resilient love driven by the belief that within love lies a spine-tingling destiny. 
The movie opens with Jamal and Saleem Malik as elementary age children residing in a garbage dump in India's largest city. 
Covered in ragged clothing, their days are spent in scandalous wanderings throughout urban slums begging and stealing. 
Scurrying about in one dilapidated shantytown, the two encounter a religious insurrection escalating into a violent storm of chaos and mayhem. 
Innocent bystanders are abruptly immersed in a sea of sadistic beatings. 
No one in sight is immune.  After witnessing the violent and horrifying death of their mother, the brothers run for their lives through a maze of muddled alleyways and encounter a dazed and distraught little girl.  Lost and alone, frightened and fearful, and with no place to go, the abandoned Latika chases after the brothers.The wild pursuit through impoverished conurbations on the flight to safety from riotous disorder leads to a nearby trainyard littered with empty railcars.  The boys climb into an open boxcar as India's famous monsoons come crashing down.  Shocked and terrified from the loss of her mother, Latika squats in the torrential rain a few yards away.  She is afraid to leave the brothers.  Somehow she has found security in their presence.  Eventually, Saleem and Jamal invite Latika in from the downpour and the three become inseparable as their lives embark on a voyage through a spellbinding world of poverty, cruelty, and haunting encounters with malevolent individuals.

Over time, Jamal, the younger brother falls in love with Latika.  The movie details this breathtaking love story and traces it across the next decade of their lives.  Woven throughout the storyline are the astonishing attributes of love, traits we know exist but are inconspicuously absent and discreetly vacant in many of our relationships.  Watching Slumdog Millionaire, I was tenderly reminded of the amazing buoyancy of love and how nothing external – no tragedy, no hurt, no pain, no barrier, no separation, no evil – nothing outside of ourselves can hinder and prohibit love from reaching its required destiny.  Love soars above obstacles; love overcomes setbacks; love ascends unconquerable mountains.  For love reaches and stretches, it searches and pursues, offering a dazzling destiny to all who choose to follow its way.  Love is the most resilient force of hope, of freedom, of faith, of discovery, of purpose, of completion; present in all seasons including the dark and dreary winter when enormous assaults of a fallen world inflict us with deep and painful lesions, wounds of life that seemingly chase love away, wounds we fear may never heal.

Love does not always enable our lives to encounter positive happenings.  Love can lead to very difficult experiences, devastating moments of loss and hurt that engulf and choke and blanket our hearts in dark clouds of desolation.  We are left with an inner emptiness, a hollow void that asks confusing questions.  Billows of hurt impair our perspective and veil our understanding, shading us from seeing that pain is commensurate with love and is one trek love must travel to reach its fulfilling destiny.  Without struggle and even hopelessness, love becomes nothing but another kind of sentimentality, a murky miasma concealing love's true and authentic nature and its ultimate destination.  Never forget, just beyond the gloomy mist hovering in and around our world sits a vast expanse of brilliant blue filled with bright rays of warmth and hope.  Once the dark clouds pass, colors of love always appear, love shows up in God's promise of a rainbow.  And this is the message poignantly communicated throughout Slumdog Millionaire, a message I learned firsthand.

After living through a mostly beautiful, sometimes mind-bending and heart-wrenching relationship; a marriage filled with a myriad of contradictions covering the spectrum of behavioral and emotional extremes – joyful passion to sorrowful pain, blissful happiness to mournful sadness – my heart has not grown frigid, nor is it afraid of love and its amazing destiny.  Incredibly, the opposite has occurred.  Sometimes we do not learn what love is until we experience the gutted and devastating reality of what love is not.  Invite your heart to accept one of life's most mysterious and troubling paradoxes: We cannot understand what love truly is until we experience the most painful lesson of learning what love is not.

No one can hurt you as deeply as the one you love.  When you allow another inside your life, you leave yourself open.  Even after years together, your affection and trust can be disappointed.  Life is dangerously unpredictable.  People change, often quite dramatically and suddenly.  Bitterness and resentment quickly replace belonging and togetherness.  Every relationship travels at some time through the black valley of despair.  This tests every aspect of your love, of your affection.  Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore and wounded.  This can bring the greatest destruction to your bond, for it distorts love's true essence.  However, if you can come through this time, it can purify your love, allowing speciousness and fallacy and various misconceptions to fall away.  This leads to new ground where fondness can grow, where love can flourish, leading you to its enthralled destiny, causing you to experience a depth of love unlike anything you have encountered.

At times, relationships turn and partners fix on each other at their points of mutual negativity.  When you meet only at the point of poverty between you, it's as if you give birth to an apparition that desires to devour every shred of affection and love between you.  Your essence is combed.  You become helpless and repetitive with each other.  Here you need to give love a chance to work in order to redirect your spirits.  Often we speculate on why our relationships fall apart.  What seem like the obvious factors are not always the truest ones.  The current tendency to shrink love to information and analysis often leads to the disenchantment we commonly feel in our relationships and in our lives.

When relationships are in trouble, they are not usually healed by endless examination and counseling.  Spending countless hours in therapy, covering a plethora of issues does not always untie the knots of our relationships.  Occasionally, we need to step back, push the issues to the side and simply allow love to go to work and let love do its work.  If you look at another through the lens of love, the magic you once had can return because love has the transcendent ability to bypass the mind and affect the spirit.  If you invoke love's power and presence around you, the ancient affinity that brought you together can hold you together and allow you to discover an amazing profundity and intensity of love you never knew existed.  Impossible knots of relationship can unfold themselves and reach the necessary loosening that extends beyond our uncertain vision of love ever flourishing again.

Never underestimate or limit the mysterious and provocative lifeline of love, a lifeline of immeasurable hope overflowing with divine surprise, leading to providential destiny.  Love is filled with a divine script that cannot be restrained by any of life's improvisations and setbacks.  It has its own life, a degree of life far greater than anything we can truly imagine.  We will never experience this degree if we knowingly and willfully resist love and its beautiful qualities.

In my aforementioned situation, I needed to allow love to do its work in my life.  I had to let go of acts of injury and hurt and consider greater treasures than my personal feelings, such as my daughters and their lives, such as God's blessing and his destiny of love for my life.  In truth, I needed to trust God's word, believe what it said about love, and live this out.  As I did, my heart changed.  I found myself filled with feelings of warmth and concern for a person who hurt me deeply.  I was able to let go of the pain of what separated us and embrace the joy of our time together.  Love allowed me to see the good, not the bad.  In turn, my world opened to the wind of resilient love, and this love has changed me in ways I never imagined.

No matter what you have been through, the heartbreak and disappointment you have encountered, love still offers its destiny.  No matter how desiccated your current relationship may be, love is present, and with love present anything can happen.  Nothing is impossible in a world ruled by love.  Should you find yourself lost and alone and broken, frightened by the prospect of ever opening your heart to love again, allow me to encourage you with this thought:  the emotion that breaks your heart is the very one that heals it.  Love is God's greatest gift of healing and its destiny will unfold in your life.  It was this very theme that enabled Slumdog Millionaire to cross cultural boundaries and captivate the hearts of audiences around the world.  And this was beautifully portrayed in a heartrending scene at the movie’s end.

Jamal is back in the setting of his greatest pain and loss where he saw Latika for the last time, the Mumbai Train Station.  Months earlier, she was violently ripped from his arms.  During the vicious abduction, one of the kidnappers savagely filleted her cheek, carving from eye to chin and threw her into the back of a speeding car.  The "Slumdog" is saddened and broken and empty as he relives his unimaginable loss.  Forlorn and hopeless, Jamal sits with his back to a pole and dolefully looks around.  Suddenly he sees Latika through a maze of moving trains.  He rushes toward her.  With each step he takes, love's destiny is seen and felt.  On reaching her, he lifts her in his arms and then gently holds her and softly traces the brutal scar stretching down the left side of her face whispering to her mark of insecurity, "You are the most beautiful woman in the world."  She whispers back "I thought you had forgotten."  He responds, "I never forgot. I knew I would find you. It's our destiny."  Love has a destiny for all who follow its path.  Its destiny awaits you.

The Great Design – Renewal

 Life today conspires against renewal.  At one point, our society valued self-denial or deferred gratification.  Spouses sacrificed for one another in pursuit of long-term goals for their marriage, for their family.  Parents trapped in an unsatisfying relationship stayed together for the sake of the children.  People knew who lived next door and there was a sense of commitment to all who dwelled on the same block.  If one family faced a crisis, others were made aware, not through gossip and fiery rumors but out of genuine concern and compassion for those we understood to be a part of our lives, a part of our community.

Self-denial, honoring commitment, compassion and concern for others, sacrifice for greater good, were fabrics of society visibly seen and foundations in which life was rooted and grounded.  The essence of what life was about, of what was worthy and imperative, believed to be of the highest order, allowed lives to consistently undergo some process of renewal through experiences encountered, driven by principles diametrically opposed to selfishness.  In our conscience there was a healthy sense of what mattered most and some understanding of what brought life fulfillment, joy, and happiness.  Though we could not always explain it, our spirits understood the Great Design.

Somewhere along the way there was a gradual shift in culture and the self-denial ethic morphed into the self-fulfillment ethic.  This was a dramatic swing and the transfer turned some of what we valued upside down.  A seismic shaking brought about a rearrangement of ethics, of values, of what we deemed important, spawning a palpable change in the mental and emotional landscape of our lives.  Not all of this change was positive.  Some changes hinder and create fabrications of what ultimately grants fulfillment, of what really leads to happiness.  In numerous ways, our culture has become an instant society that devalues relationship, diminishes sacrifice, and cheapens commitment.  We are more prone to listen to our emotional needs and seek to have them fulfilled immediately, without sacrifice, without waiting, without considering others.  Consequently, we jettison anything that proves complicated or disconcerting, tiresome or boring.  Under the new rules, the powerful act of renewal loses out, the Great Design breaks down.

Many lives today lack vigor and freshness.  Our relationships, our marriages, our experiences, our days, quickly become stale.  With the enormous emphasis on self, there is a tendency to ignore the present, producing less and less time for conversation, for contemplation, for reflection.  We have this tension, a steady sensation of not enough; not enough time, not enough leisure, not enough rest, not enough money, not enough toys.  This lack of satisfaction places our lives in a state of restlessness and agitation, creating an uneasiness which obscures reality and dangerously complicates the journey of living; often blinding us to our true purpose, to the meaning of life, to what ultimately fulfills.  Passageways to renewal become shrouded, leaving us hollow and vacant, fragile and weakened.

Humanity is God's magnum opus.  Of all creation, the splendor and majesty of everything created, we are the one and only aspect of God's handiwork made in his image.  The Great Design is the creation of humankind, formulating us to need God and to need one another.  It's only through the dynamic of relationship – vertical and horizontal – that we can reach the Shangri-La of life; the rapturous space where living is fresh and full, amazingly alive with wonder and astonishment.  As we stray from proposed constellations in which life was fashioned to flourish, God's natural act of renewal shuts down and our spirits and minds are left wanting.

God designed life to be filled with acts and occurrences that generate renewal.  Our lives are living, flowing, and sinuous, budding, growing, and emerging.  In the way we replenish our bodies with proper nutrients, causing them to renew and attain fullness, we must do the same for our spirits and minds.  This is part of the Great Design; this is how we are made.  Should we stray from our purpose and ignore this facet of our lives, renewal is not experienced.  Life becomes blasé, dull, unfilled, empty.

Renewal means to make life new.  It's an innate process that restores freshness, vigor, and vitality, restoring what has become faded or disintegrated.  This process happens naturally as long as we feed our lives proper nutrients.  Renewal is a constant state that keeps churning and spinning, activating itself in the decisions we make, the things we do, hour by hour, day by day.

Everything within creation operates on the cycle of renewal.  Day becomes night, becomes day.  Seasons come and go and come.  Flowers bloom and die and bloom.  Tides rise and fall and rise.  Vegetation foliates, exfoliates, foliates.  Creatures replenish, excrete, replenish.  Bodies wake, sleep, wake.  God designed the world with a natural order and the process of renewal is at its heart.  Our spirits are no different from any other form of creation.  There is a perfect design and when we operate within that intent – do that for which we were created – renewal takes its course in our lives.  Accordingly, we experience fullness and abundance.  When we step outside our intended purpose, chaos ensues.

Our universe runs by faithful and consistent laws.  The sun always rises in the east.  Rain brings to earth its most needed resource.  Planets follow dependable orbits.  Animals migrate annually.  Nothing in the natural order is found wanting.  You see this and feel this when you stop and savor the natural world around you.  Gaze up at the stars at night, look across a beautiful meadow, stare at the endless expanse of blue on any beach, or marvel at majestic peaks.  Something resonates in our spirits when we look at the splendor of creation.  Our interior world experiences deep peace and contentment.  We are looking at order, viewing creation functioning as it was designed to do.  In turn, our spirits connect.  They align with the Creator's intent.  A properly aligned mind and spirit directs our lives to the abundance God promised us.

God has built into our systems a rhythm of life which we must not violate: output and input; work and rest; service and worship; personal time and family time.  It's very easy to neglect some of the less active disciplines.  We live in a world that continually bombards us with messages emphasizing self – you deserve a break today, look out for number one, you can have it all now.  Such messages run contrary to the Great Design.  God set certain rules in motion and within those rules exists a natural process of design that must be followed in order for life to blossom, to thrive.  When we drift outside of this design, life becomes arid and stale, uninspired and flat, blank if you will.

When asked to identify the most important rule in life, Jesus immediately replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”  His answer summed up the Great Design, declaring what the course of life should be.  Jesus did not come to earth to reverse established laws of order by creating different laws.  He fulfilled the law of order already set in motion.  His life demonstrated the powerful act of renewal.  Furthermore, Paul wrote the following to the Philippians and the Romans: Let this mind be in you that was in Jesus; be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  These verses leave me asking questions: How can I possibly love God with all my heart, mind, and soul?  And how do I renew my mind, get the mind of Jesus, and practically live this out?

I found my answer by following the pattern Jesus set.  We renew our lives, our minds, our hearts, by engaging the acts of Jesus.  When we live out such acts – show kindness, love others, bear another's burden, exercise faith, commune with God, place others first – renewal comes.  As we give, we receive.  Life is not a meaningless sequence of actions but an arena to live out the will of another world, to live out the Great Design.  In doing this, renewal comes to our lives and we are satisfied, fresh, fulfilled, abundant.  We are made new.

God's world is active and alive, filled with wonder and awe.  It's not filled with deadness or emptiness; it's filled with life.  And life always births more life.  Money, possessions, accomplishments are not alive.  They are dead.  They do not feed our spirits.  Thus they never satisfy.  They create euphoria for a moment but do not fulfill and they do not renew.  Only something living can renew.  What is living?  Caring for the poor, loving your wife, creating memories for your children, visiting a friend, sending a note, engaging God, helping others.

When our lives focus on self, are driven by self, we become addicted to self.  This is what happened in my life.  I became preoccupied with self, and this sent me on an endless hunt to find fulfillment.  The classic pattern of addiction is to increase the dosage: the more we do, the more we want, the worse we feel.  Though we may get what we want, internally we remain empty.  Our inner life is left craving.  Due to how we're designed, acts born of self are not enough to satisfy; they do not fulfill.  It's difficult for our success-mad, egocentric culture to grasp this crucial truth.  It's understandable only when the false values that obsess us are stripped away.

It has been a humiliating and dark experience, a pilgrimage through a desolate desert filled with extremely difficult and painful realities that helped me rediscover this invaluable truth.  Focus on self, possessions, accomplishments, bring no lasting joy, they do not renew my spirit.  They blind me from seeing what I need most is infinitely more precious and indispensable than accolades of success and roaring accomplishments.  What I need most is a genuine and authentic relationship with my Creator; a sincere compassion and brokenness for others; a humble and meek attitude that permeates everything about my life, everything about who I am as a person.  For the greater part of my journey I strived for these.  But somewhere along the way I lost them, and in losing them I lost myself and lost my way, causing God's act of renewal to lie dormant in my life for a period of time.

The spiritual awakening I have encountered has allowed these truths to again govern my life, enabling the process of renewal to work again in my world.  This has helped me recognize and understand I need divine empowerment that comes from outside of me and my giftedness, empowerment that comes from a place of rebirth; a place of honesty, a place of integrity, a place of humility.  This place is the foundation of my life, the bedrock of my faith, the place I now live.

In one sense, I have never felt more alive.  An acute awareness of life envelops me every moment of every day.  I see things and feel things I overlooked for so many years.  I find beauty in the simple: phone calls, writing cards, staring at pictures.  Other elements of life, like touching grass and seeing the immense blue and breathing fresh air and feeling the warmth of the sun are moments I now cherish.  For nearly a two-year period, most of these were taken from me.  I hang on to every word in conversations with my daughters, and when I get off the phone I recall the words they spoke.  I live for those moments where I hear their voices.  To me it’s magical.

Looking back, I see how so much of my life was not lived in the present.  I constantly found myself chasing dreams, planning new ventures, rarely taking time to stop and realize how blessed I was as a man, how much God had given me.  I did not realize any of this until I lost everything, until I was separated from everyone I love.

I was blessed with the most amazing woman and I took her for granted.  I became entangled in my own world of dreams and thoughts, seldom satisfied or content, consistently wanting more, wanting bigger, wanting better.  Frequently, I was not available emotionally, often lost in my head chasing and pursuing, rarely stopping to look into her soul, to listen to her heart, to allow myself to be mesmerized by her amazing, fascinated by her stunning, enthralled by her brilliance, awestruck by her gorgeous, captivated by her incredible.  Inadvertently, I failed to appreciate the magnitude of her gifts and allowed my selfish interests and desires – which in the end meant nothing in the bigger world of my life – to become of primary importance.  What is life if you build an empire but lose the one person you love with your entire heart, the one person who completes you?

Treasure the people God placed in your life.  Some say love matures.  I do not believe this.  There is nothing mature about love.  I believe we use such terminology as an excuse to avoid facing reality and admitting that certain feelings may have faded, that endorphins have quit flowing, that we have allowed love to become lost.  We lose sight of the wonder and awe and magic of love.  We take love for granted and assume it will always be present.  Love does not die, hearts do.  The human heart –the field that contains love – must always be cultivated, tilled, watered and harvested.  If not, it will become a wasteland where love cannot grow and flourish, where love cannot blossom.  The beautiful field – the heart – once filled with love, becomes a dry and desolate field as a result of apathy, neglect, and indifference.  Don't allow the hearts of the people you love to become a barren wasteland thirsting for drops of affection, longing for showers of compliments, aching for sprinklings of adoration, yearning for a trickling of time and tenderness.  Love the individuals in your life.  Treasure them.  Adore them.  Make time for them.  And give them your whole heart – hold nothing back.

When you care for another, when you deny yourself, when you honor commitments in the face of feelings that call for the opposite, your mind and heart, your life is renewed with sparkle and dynamism.  The acts of these qualities persistently send your mind and spirit through the process of renewal; they birth newness and vitality.  They recreate life.

God's plan is not for us to live in a febrile fog, drifting aimlessly on windless waters.  No, his desire is for our lives to experience renewal, sanctioning his rushing wind to catch our lives and send them to dizzying heights.  We experience maximum life when our spirits are aligned in a way that expresses the will of the Designer.

Fill your life with moments that continually keep you on the path of renewal.  This approach does not contradict what our hearts yearn for; rather it fully employs the design features God built into our spirits to fulfill us, causing our lives to be fresh and vibrant and transcendent.  The wisest man of all time reminds us with these words, "Store God's commands in your heart.  If you do this you will live many years and your life will be full.  Whatever you do, do well.  For when you go to the grave there will be no more planning, and you must give an account to God for everything you do."

Transformation

As human beings, we have an inborn desire for God.  Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and most precious treasure.  There is a constant yearning in our hearts to find fulfillment, a pining for completion.  We live on a broken planet fallen far from God's original intent, and this state of brokenness magnifies the emptiness in our hearts.  It impels us to seek, to search, to hunt for wholeness, for a fullness that not only brings our lives meaning and purpose, but one that leads to peace and contentment.

In the normal course of providence, God works through and in creation, not despite it.  God did not design our planet as an arena to showcase his greatness and his power and his sovereignty.  He certainly could have done this if he so desired.  Instead, he designed it to be governed by relationship.  God longs to relate to us personally, to love and to be loved.  As with us, God's greatest desire and need is relationship.  In the truest definition of who God is and what God is like, Scripture tells us God is love.  In order for love to be love and for love to survive, love needs relationship.  Without relationship, there is no need for love.  Without love, there is no fulfillment, no wholeness, no completeness.  Absent of this totality, we are left in a wounded state pursuing any course or path we sense might satisfy our emptiness and unfulfilled longings.  Sometimes, like the parable of the Prodigal Son, these conduits lead our lives to inconceivable locations of loss, humiliation, regret, and pain; locales we presume will forever alter our lives and deprive us of a future filled with blessing and goodness.

Occasionally we travel certain paths not of our own choosing.  We do not come into this world alone and we make no choice regarding our birthplace, our environment, our family.  We arrive in a fallen world of imperfection alive and fluid with the active dynamic of relationship.  We are linked to others, and this arrangement of connectivity can pull our lives down paths we never desired or chose of our own volition.  Be it routes of our own design or nomadic choices of others to whom we are attached, sometimes we wind up in strange lands of captivity, foreign domiciles in which the grimness of our surroundings blind us from anticipating recovery, picturing hope, envisioning healing, visualizing wholeness, imagining freedom.  In truth, our wounded state veils us from seeing who God is and what he can do, concealing one of life's certainties: God can transform our lives, transform our surroundings, and transform our circumstances.  It also masks us from recognizing who we are, God's creation, obscuring us from comprehending who we can someday become, God's triumph.  At the heart of all reality is God, an unimaginable source of power and love.  In the face of such reality we can grovel down paths of our own choosing and remain in unfamiliar abodes of captivity, or we can allow his work of transformation to take its course in our lives.

Because we live in a world of matter, most of the ways we encounter God include materiality.  God's own state however, God's preferred milieu if you will, is the realm of spirit.  It is only through Spirit touching spirit – through transformation ­– we become the people we are designed to be: people complete and whole and content, lacking in need and want.  We cannot become what God has called us to be unless we accept our wounded state.  God already knows who we are; we are the ones who must find a way to come to terms with our true selves.  If we are made in God's own image, God will make a way to fulfill our deepest longings.  Transformation is that way. 

Transformation is cooperation with God, a consent that opens the way for grace to work so we can experience the majesty and wonder of life God's way.  Jesus said, "I have come to give you life and life abundantly."  This is life beyond, life above, life exceedingly more than all we can ask or imagine.  We only find, discover and experience this life by allowing God to do his work of transformation in our lives, by engaging him and trusting him and submitting to him no matter where we find ourselves, no matter how hopeless our conditions might seem.

The story of humanity is one of God choosing to give away power and entrust individuals with the gift of free choice.  Virtually everyone who has breathed life and walked the planet has failed God some way in handling this freedom.  Even those we place on a pedestal, our heroes of faith, messed things up badly at some point in their journey.  Those whom God picked to lead new ventures, his select – Adam, Abraham, Moses, David – made dreadful choices adversely affecting their lives along with the lives of many others.  Yet, they recovered and overcame through the process of transformation by submitting to the hand of God and allowing his hand to do its work in their lives regardless of where it led them and what it put them through displaying God's great verity: nothing irredeemable has happened or can happen on our way to our destiny in God's full world.

In short, transformation is the work that brings God into my world and ushers me into God's, permitting visible and invisible worlds to congregate.  Encounters and contact with God do not just provide a moment of spiritual ecstasy; they equip me for living, for life.  They change me and launch me into the abundant life God has planned for me, enabling me to experience grace through my defects, mercy in my failures, and abundance and blessing in adverse circumstances triggered by the hand of another's doing.  Every now and then the strands of messiness and confusion and unfairness manage to braid themselves together and – in the most improbable and miraculous way – offer up a radiant affirmation of possibility that transcends anything you could ever hope to imagine.

Most of our struggles in a life of faith circle around two themes: why God does not act the way I want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to.  Transformation is the precise point where these two themes converge, and it's the process God uses to mold and shape us into his image.  By allowing his work of renovation to take place, change is experienced in all facets of our lives.  God does not exclude any part of who we are from this process of conversion.  This act of alteration touches our hearts, our minds, our emotions, our bodies, our relationships, our careers, our dreams, our trials, our failures.  No part of us is immune from God's hand of change, for transformation is the sudden immersion of his Spirit into the universal world surrounding our lives, the current of all life flowing in and through and around us.

 

Transformation is a continuous act of renewal converting deep personal internal structures into visible surface structures enabling formations to evolve in form and function, causing one to experience change detectable and noticeable.  It's a painful and joyful experience and a path we do not walk alone.  God walks with us and gives us strength and courage to change.  He fills us with power to become new people and imbues us with hope, enabling us to see our lives not only for what they are but also for what they can become.

I have found great comfort in knowing that many of God's servants throughout Scripture have found themselves in situations of captivity, in settings distant and lonely and difficult, surrounded by conditions that should have destroyed their faith.  Somehow they overcame the elements of their torn-up lives and chose to trust God and walk with him.  I think of Joseph who was betrayed by his own family, sold into slavery, and then thrown into prison in Egypt.  I consider Daniel who was abducted and forced to serve enemy administrations in Babylon and Persia.  As a result of committing civil disobedience and breaking the law, he was delivered to a lion’s den to be ripped apart and eaten alive.  Then there were Moses and Peter; the former went on the run for years in the Sinai Desert after murdering another, and the latter found himself in prison facing imminent death through beheading.  And let’s not forget David who was so overcome with lust for a beautiful woman he allowed his cravings to escort him down the painful path of adultery and induce him to murder the stunning beauty queen's husband.  All of these found themselves on crooked and dangerous paths, either through acts of their own choosing or because of someone else's decisions, and those selections sent them to a point far removed from God's intent for their lives.  Instead of turning from God and hardening their hearts, letting bitterness and failure deprive them of God's future blessings, they allowed God to work in their state of affairs by reaching out to him and opening their lives to his work of transformation.

In turn, God was with them and brought each one of them through their crisis in a unique way.  He also used them powerfully in their given environments and situations.  Their faith and unshakable conviction in a living God was the main reminder of a reality contradicted by their surroundings.  This resilient belief served to restore the truth belied by everything around them and caused them to believe they would overcome, that they would one day rise from the ashes of apparent destruction.  This is perhaps the most powerful truth the process of transformation has taught me in my darkest personal crisis.

Every so often, events in our lives take place and it's not until we arrive at some distant point where over time we can see how these events have shaped themselves into a meaningful pattern.  Back when they took place, we did not understand the full significance of such experiences and the lessons they imparted, nor could we see how they fit into the larger part of our story, our journey, especially when they are negative experiences partially created by our own hands.  Our lives in some sense are a roundabout tale filled with loose threads of twisting roads we ply with our choices and decisions, and sometimes we get lost amid the unexpected detours and the landslides of complications that cascade down upon us as we venture through the harsh and wondrous journey of life, of living.  Over time we see how these digressions and dead ends also provide and fill our lives with insight, depth, discernment, discovery, leading us to a place of healing.  Once we come through we can look back and make peace with failure, hurt, injury, and regret.  This empowers us to continue our journey, giving us strength to make wrongs right, freeing us from the past, enabling us to again engage the future.  Hope resides with what is yet to come, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past and glimpsing the road traveled.

Occasionally we arrive at a place so distant and so far beyond the margins of our known world, a place we believe is the end of the road, a place of lost hope, one that is the most isolated and foreboding place on earth.  But sometimes this is the place we need to land.  For it's here we discover depths of life we never knew existed.  We learn things about ourselves we never understood.  We come to a place of dependence that lies beyond anything material, anything created by our own talents and gifts.  This is a place uncorrupted by the false pretense of misguided egos chattering in the background filling our minds with the detritus of narcissistic thoughts in which we naively believe we are better or more important than others, that we play some heroic or grand role in the world in which we have been placed.

In my current arrival at this spiritual and emotional place, I have discovered it's the most liberating place a person can land.  For it's here we fully find truth and freedom, truth that matters, freedom that frees.  This place is seen throughout Scripture and it wasn't until men stumbled, fell and landed in this place did they discover the truth and freedom that transformed them into the great individuals they became, individuals who went from trusting God to individuals whom God could trust.  It's this discovery that has instilled in me a fierce and hardened belief that happy endings can be found anywhere, at anytime, at anyplace – in a lion’s den, in acts of betrayal, in abject failure, in wanderings through lonely deserts, in prison.

Transformation is the process God brings us through, enabling us to believe and to pursue, to chase the ending we know God has for us.  We must never give up.  Never.  Miracles and destinies of fate merge at the most improbable intersections, crossroads on the road of life one could never envision or imagine.  And they often arrive at times we never expect.

Allowing God to do his work of transformation in my life has birthed a new feeling inside, a hope that surfaces once the darkness has passed.  It is the rare kind of feeling that comes when something inside is woken from slumber and brought forth to live.  As I sit and contemplate and look back on the road traveled, I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking murky moments of time passed.  The tick in my mind holds me and carries me and keeps me like the slow swing of a pendulum suspended in air, moving back and forth across two passageways.  Momentarily, I sit in a trance; I see the process of change as the world has stopped.  Transformation has taken its course.  The old is now gone.  The grief, the anger, the pain, the hurt, they reside in the grave.  New life has begun and with it are signs one finds when the rite of passage is complete.  My heart surfaces through the dark, hard, rocky soil; like new growth in spring signifying the end of the black, cold, dreary winter.  God has not placed a period in my life that signifies an end; He has placed a comma that signifies a pause.  The best is yet to come.  New life.  New love.  New moments.  God's abundant life awaits me.  It awaits you as well.  Allow God to transform your world, to take you down the path that leads to this abundance.  He believes in you deeply.

A Day In My Life - Shackled

 I am standing in a parking lot in some location somewhere and everything is not as it should be and it's horrible and bad and horrible horrible bad and I am confused and lost and do not know where I am or where I am going.  I am in a time warp and have been transported to some bizarre place for some bizarre experiment in some bizarre world and no one could understand unless they were standing next to me and if they were standing they could not understand ever understand.  My body is dressed in dirty clothes belonging to someone else and the shirt on my back is speckled with patches of bile from someone else.  The underwear slipping off my waist is streaked with stains from someone else and the pants sliding down my legs are blemished with dirt and grime from someone else.  My face is hot and red and wet and it's burning and throbbing.  My sweat is baking and bubbling and scorching.  My eyes are stinging and itching and every few seconds hot fluid slips inside and seals my lids and for a moment there is relief as the world turns black.  Black black black.

My hands are distended and they are chained to my waist and my wrists are red and blue and they throb as steel shackles cut into my white puffy skin leaving deep impressions of purple and violet.  My feet are swollen and they are tethered together and heavy manacles weigh on my scraped enflamed ankles perforating the thin tissue resting as shelves on my bones.  I stand and I breathe and I stand and I stare.  I am alone, lost and broken.  I stare at my surroundings.  I stare at freedom.  I stare at once was at should be.  Alone lost broken I stare.  Stare stare stare.

The hot sun is shining and all its rays are penetrating and I am burning and melting and dissolving and liquefying and through a flaming mirage I see the waves rolling and rising and rolling through the conflagration that surrounds me and I have slipped into hell and the staggering waves roll and rise and roll and bounce and crush and through the blur I see the blonde and the blue and the brown and the brown and the blonde and the blue and the innocence and the smiles and I am carried away to another place in another time and I hear the voices, the soft little tender voices, I hear.  Hear hear hear.

I Hear.

Daddy.

I hear.

Giggles.

I hear.

Laughter.

I hear soft, sweet, tender, beautiful voices from heaven and for a moment, just for a moment there is peace and calm and tranquility and the waves are lucid and clear and they carry me softly and gently to a better place, to a better better place and I hear Daddy Daddy Daddy.

I hear.

Daddy Daddy.

I hear.

Daddy look.

I hear.

Daddy Daddy come see.

I hear.

Hurry Daddy hurry hurry.

I hear.

Daddy Daddy look look hurry Daddy hurry hurry.

I hear and I hear and I hear again and hear again and hear again and again and I am lost in a better world in a better time in a better place and I close my eyes and the world is bright and blue and blonde and brown and liquid slips from eyes, seeps trickles escapes slips from my eyes.  I try to forget where I am and why I am here.  I try to forget what lies in front of me.  I try to forget about prison, about separation, about loneliness, about shame, about failure.  I try to forget that there is a world outside of that which is in my head.  I try to forget that my daughters have lost.  I try to forget that the blue and the blonde and the brown and the blue have lost.  Lost daddy lost daddy lost lost lost lost.  I try to forget that daddy can't look can't see can't hurry can't look can't see can't hurry.  I try to forget to forget to forget.  I hear a voice.  I hear a terrible and awful voice, a terrible terrible awful voice.

Move.

I hear.

Move now.

Harsh yelling screaming.

Quit standing and move.

I hate the voice I hear.  I want to squeeze my head and my ears and squeeze and plug and press and stuff and jam and swing and punch and tear and rip and destroy and scream and squeeze and plug and stuff.  The sun is burning and I am sweating and dripping and soaking and hurting and aching.  My feet are heavy, my body is tired, my mind is broken.

I hear the awful terrible voice.

I said move.

Move now asshole.

I ignore and I move.

Alone lost broken I move.  Step.  Shuffle.  Step.  Shuffle.  Step.  Shuffle.  I hear chains.  I hear metal.  I hear scraping.  The walk is only a few minutes but it seems like a lifetime. Step shuffle step shuffle step shuffle. 

Keep moving.

I hear.

Faster.

I hear.

Move faster.

I ignore and I move.  Step shuffle step shuffle.  And I hear, I hear it all.  The voice in my head.  The voice outside my head.  The noise in my head.  The noise outside my head.  I hear it all I hear it all I hear it all.  Daddy daddy chains metal scraping move Daddy come look chains move now Daddy come see come see Daddy metal move faster hurry Daddy hurry hurry scraping move faster move move faster.  I want to scream and run and go back to a better place and a better time and there is this voice, the awful terrible voice I ignore and the voice screams MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE.

I turn around and I stare.

Alone lost broken I stare.

I still have some dignity.   I have lost everything but still have something.  A speckle, a sliver, a grain, I still have something.  I still have some dignity somewhere somehow.  You won't steal my dignity.

MOVE.

I am moving.

MOVE FASTER.

I am moving faster.

TURN AROUND AND KEEP MOVING.

Screw you I am moving.

The gates open and hell and its legions are manifesting themselves in dense pain in heavy anger in fiery rage in foul language and I hear a voice, a vile hostile voice, an awful terrible vile hostile voice.

WHAT DID YOU SAY ASSHOLE?

You heard me.

My eyes close and my mind closes and my heart closes and the world goes black and everything goes black and I am lost and I have lost and this lostness has reduced me to a lump of sadness and regret and grief and anguish and my daughters have lost and daddy is lost and we have lost.  The sun is climbing and the heat is rising and the day is growing and my feet are weighty and my hands are heavy and my body is burning and my heart is pounding and I hear steps.  I hear footsteps.  I hear running footsteps.  I hear heavy running footsteps.  I hear heavy running angry footsteps and I hear vileness and craziness and madness and I am surrounded by insanity and my mind is black and my heart is black and the world is black and I hear steps.  I hear footsteps.  I hear running footsteps.  I hear soft running footsteps.  I hear soft running happy footsteps and I hear happiness and joyfulness and playfulness and I am surrounded by small little feet pattering and running and jumping and leaping pattering running jumping leaping into my arms and I hear laughing and giggling and kissing laughing giggling kissing and I hear Daddy Daddy I love you I love you Daddy I love you.

Something else comes and it makes me feel weak and scared and fragile and I don't want to be hurt and this feeling is the feeling I have when I know I can be hurt and hurt deeper and more terribly than anything physical and I want it to come and I want to believe and I want to hold on and I want it to come but I am alone lost broken weak fragile scared.  My mind is shackled and my heart is shackled and my dreams are shackled and my hopes are shackled and my faith is shackled and everything I believe is shackled but it still comes and it arrives and it comforts and it calms and it assures and it promises and it declares and it does not leave and I hear and it speaks and I hear a voice, a still small voice.

I am here.

A still small voice.

I am here.

A still small voice.

I am here.

Here.

Now.

I hear a voice.

Fight.

Survive.

Overcome.

Recover.

Rise.

I hear voices.

Blue.

Blonde.

Brown.

I hear a voice.

Fight.

Recover.

Rise.

I hear a still small voice.

I am here.

Christmas Night

It’s taking place somewhere near Berlin.  Snow is falling gently to the ground.   Few cars are on the road this time of night. Illuminating the countryside in silhouette form, it is the most spectacular moonlit sky I have ever seen.  Its beauty is magical.  There are gold and silver linings, created by the reflection of the moon’s light on the clouds surrounding it.  Every few minutes, the wind blows these clouds across the face of the moon, bringing with it a mystical presence.  After a few moments, the clouds clear, and the warmth of the light grants me a new joy.

I have been on the road for twelve hours.  My trip began early this morning in Helsinki, Finland.  Following a short flight from Helsinki to Stockholm, Sweden, I picked up my car.  From there I drove through Sweden and Denmark, crossed the Baltic Sea on two separate ferries, and finally landed in Northern Germany late this evening.  

On this trip, I viewed some of the most picturesque scenery in the world.  Sweden has a charm all its own.  All day the countryside of this nation had given me a deep appreciation for the creativity of our Creator.  And now twelve hours later and 600 miles farther, I am awestruck by another aspect of the Creator’s creation, the moon and the sky.

After traveling all day, numerous thoughts crossed my mind.  For me, I tend to dream, reflect, and wonder.  Of the three, the aspect of dreaming always seems to dominate my thinking.  An array of ideas, goals, and wishful thoughts keeps my mind occupied for hours.  Constantly, I am searching for notepads and pens to record these ideas.  However, at this time, my mind is filled mostly with wonder.  There is no need for a notepad.  My thoughts are coming from deep within.  And this is largely due to what I am seeing outside my windshield.  Considering all the elements surrounding me, this night would have been the perfect Christmas night.  At least to me it would have been.

Staring at the breathtaking scene in the sky, I decide to pull over to the side of the road.  I climb out of the vehicle and sit on the hood, staring into the night.  To those passing by, it must be a peculiar sight.  After all, it is midnight.

During my fifteen minutes on the hood of the car, I am reminded of something I wrote once in New York City.  Sitting in the heart of Times Square, people-watching and reflecting, I was penning some thoughts into my journal.  After a few hours of observance, I found myself writing, “Every moment has significance.  Every ordinary thing carries its own beauty.  Look deep and you will find it.”  People rarely realize the most precious and beautiful things in life are usually found in the ordinary.  The following story of Bob Edens illustrates this point.

*            For fifty-one years Bob Edens was blind.  He couldn’t see a thing.  His world was a black hall of sounds and smells.  He felt his way through five decades of darkness.  And then he could see.  A skilled surgeon performed a complicated operation and, for the first time, Bob Edens had sight.  He found it overwhelming.  “I never would have dreamed that yellow is so ...  yellow,” he exclaimed.  “I don’t have the words.  I am amazed by yellow.  But red is my favorite color.  I just can’t believe red.”

            “I can see the shape of the moon  ...  and I like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky, leaving a vapor trail.  And of course, sunrises and sunsets.  And at night I look at the stars in the sky and the flashing light.  You could never know how wonderful everything is.”   He’s right.  Those of us who have lived a lifetime with vision could never know how wonderful it must be to be able to see for the first time.  The ability to see is something we take for granted.

But Bob Edens is not the only one who has spent a lifetime near something without seeing it.  All of us suffer from some sort of blindness.  Amazing, isn’t it?  We can live next to something for a lifetime, but unless we take time to focus on it, it does not become a part of our life.  Unless we somehow have our blindness lifted, our world is only a black cave.  Think about it.  Just because one has witnessed a thousand rainbows doesn’t mean he’s seen the grandeur of one.  One can live near a garden and fail to focus on the splendor of the flower.  A man can spend a lifetime with a woman and never pause to look into her soul.  Most of us are blinded to the beauty, joy, and fulfillment that is to be seen in the ordinary.  We miss it by looking for the spectacular.

During my recollection of the above, I begin to see the beauty hidden in the sky.  My wondering allows me to realize the significance of this moment.  I discover for myself why I am being drawn to this particular scene.  You see, from God’s perspective, this scene is no major accomplishment.  When we imagine how big His Universe and Creation is, this sky is just a minute fraction of everything He owns and has created.  Yet, to me, it is one of the most awesome scenes I have ever witnessed.   It is so vast and large.  It covers everything within my natural view of sight.  When you consider all the elements – the wind, the snow, the lighting, the clouds, the moon – in one sense it is incredibly elaborate.  In another, it’s so simple and ordinary.  My perception is determined by my perspective.  The Creator or the creation.  This is when it hits me:  Tonight is like the first Christmas night, so elaborate, yet so simple.  Let me take you there.

Somewhere over Bethlehem, a star is shining brightly.  High above the city, the moon and its companions sit silently.   In the city, people are hustling and bustling everywhere.  The motel and private vacant rooms are filling up quickly.   Soon, no vacancy signs would cover the city.  Thousands have gathered in Bethlehem for the taking of the census.  I imagine just about every walk of humanity was represented.  The rich, the poor.  The “in” crowd, the outcasts.  The moral, the immoral.  The white collar, the blue collar.  The elaborate, the simple.  All were there.  Bethlehem had become a melting pot of the personalities that represent humanity.  

From the East, men of prominence arrive.  With them, they bring gifts.  They are looking for one of great importance.  Following many months of searching and chasing a star, they reach their destination.  The star has come to rest over Bethlehem.

On the outskirts of town, shepherds are doing what they always do.  Watching sheep.  Cracking jokes.  Dreaming about a better life.  Wondering what tomorrow holds.  Searching for stray sheep.  And crowding together around a warm fire to tell stories.  Many stories.  Mostly re-runs.  Men certainly have not changed much in 2,000 years.

In the city center, things are booming.  Vendors keep their shops open late.  Taverns and places of gathering are full.  Business is being discussed over a few drinks.  The innkeeper is running around trying to meet his guests’ every request.  A pillow needed here, a blanket there.  It has been a long time since his establishment was sold out.

In homes around the city, children bypass their normal bedtime hours because of all the commotion.  Relatives are reunited.  Families catch up on lost time.  Meals are cooked late into the evening.  It’s a joyous night.

In the heavens, Angels are being prepared.  Soon they will descend upon a little middle-eastern city.   Bethlehem will host God’s greatest miracle yet.  This will be the night for it to take place.  After thousands of years of planning and preparing, the time has arrived.  Tonight, God himself is going to enter the humanity He created.  He will become one of them.  The Creator will be born.

Mary and Joseph have been on the road for days.  The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was no simple one, especially for a pregnant woman.  Upon their arrival, they discover there are no rooms available.  In a desperate attempt to find a place of rest for his expecting wife, Joseph inquires with the locals.   Through a series of people, he is directed to the outskirts of town.  Here he finds a stable.  A filthy stable.  Not elaborate.  Only simple.  Nothing but an ordinary stable.  And this is where Joseph and Mary will spend the night.

Meanwhile, in the synagogues, Rabbis are enjoying each other’s company.  It’s not often they can meet together like this.   So they take advantage of the occasion.  Pulling out the Talmud, they discuss and debate over the Scriptures.  The conversation settles around the coming of the Messiah, the chosen one of Israel.  The Jewish people are longing for this moment.  And the purpose of the people gathering in Bethlehem fueled the Rabbis’ discussion.  They are tired of Roman rule.  The census is being taken to ensure everyone is taxed.  This did not sit well with the Rabbis.  Money that could be given to their cause would now go to Rome.  And in their hearts, they know the only deliverance from this bondage is the arrival of the Messiah.  So they discuss the matter.  Let’s imagine for a moment.  Maybe they just happen to read through the Prophet Micah’s words:

         “ But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are of old, from ancient times."

Following their discussion, they enter into a concert of prayer, pleading with God the Father to send His Anointed One, the Messiah.  And wouldn’t you know it.  God would answer their prayer.  This same night He would answer it.  Almost immediately.  But they will miss it.  Incredible.

Slowly, the town of Bethlehem settles down.  Taverns close up.  Vendors lock their shops.  Business deals are finalized.   People wander home.  The inn-keeper finds his way to bed.  Children fall into a deep sleep.  The Rabbis’ discussion about the Messiah ends.  For most, it will be another simple and ordinary night in Bethlehem.  The stars will shine brightly.  The moon will rest quietly.  And a few candles will flicker throughout the evening in various places.  Yes, in one sense, this night in Bethlehem will be like all others.  In another, it will be so radically different.  This night will be the first Christmas Night.  Not for all.  Only for some.  Only for those who are looking.  Only for those who can see.  See in the world of the simple and ordinary.

In the filthy stable, Mary enters into labor.  Joseph sits nervously by his wife’s side. His heart is racing.  He is experiencing all emotions.  The thrill of being a father.  Concern for his wife.  Wishing he could alleviate her pain.  Wondering what he can do to help.  All his efforts are futile.  In reality, all he can do is stand by and watch. 

Mary is experiencing deep pain.  Bearing a child is more excruciating than she had imagined.  Especially in a stable.  And there is no one to help her deliver the child.  She only has her husband’s encouraging words.  So she presses on.  Then it happens.  She hears a cry.  Joseph’s heart leaps with joy as he picks up the little, innocent baby.  Mary, exhausted from the ordeal, stares with wonder at the sight of her firstborn.  She looks into the face of the baby.  Then it hits her.  This is Him.  Her son.  Her Lord.  She can’t take her eyes off him.  Somehow she knows, Joseph is holding God.  And yet, Joseph is holding her son.  The extraordinary takes place in the ordinary.  The elaborate in the simple.  Simply amazing.  The most spectacular event has just happened in an ordinary and simple way. 

Somewhere in the heavens, the order is given.  The Angels are to descend upon the fields surrounding Bethlehem.  And within a twinkle of an eye, they arrive.  Suddenly the fields light up.  Angels are dancing and singing.   The shepherds are stunned.  Their mouths hang wide open.  Their eyes are big and round.  Never in their lives have they witnessed a scene like this.  Fear now grips their hearts.  But one of the angels chases those fears away by proclaiming, “Don’t be afraid.  I bring you the most joyful news ever announced, and it is for everyone.  The Savior, yes, the Messiah, the Lord, has been born tonight in Bethlehem.”  Then the angels begin to sing “Glory to God in the highest, peace and goodwill to all men.”  And then they’re gone.  Just like that.  The shepherds can’t believe what they’ve just experienced.  It happened so fast.  After a few moments, they rush to Bethlehem looking for the Savior.

Meanwhile, most are sleeping through the night.  Most are unaware of what has taken place.  In the morning, they will wake and face another day.  To them, the night before will have been just another simple, ordinary night.  Few will realize the impossible has occurred.  The One they have been looking for has finally arrived.  After hundreds of years of waiting, hoping, praying, He is here.  And yet most will not know.  They missed it because it was not spectacular.  No earthquake.  No lightning.  No audible voice to wake the city.  Only a baby’s cry.  Nothing else.  It was too ordinary.  Too simple.

           

Here I sit, two thousand years later, pondering the simplicity of the Incarnation.  The snow is falling heavily now.  As I stare one last time into the night sky above Berlin, I wonder how many magical moments I miss because I am blind, because I look beyond the ordinary for the spectacular.  If I were in Bethlehem on the first Christmas Night, would I have missed it?  Probably.  They missed it because of its simplicity.  They became too familiar with the fact the Messiah was coming.  It became too ordinary.  I am not much different.  And you probably are not either.  Those who missed His Majesty’s arrival that night missed it not because of evil acts or malice; no, they missed it because they just were not looking.  They were blind.  Blinded by looking for the spectacular.

            Remember Bob Edens?  Something else he said is worth noting.  “Grass was something I had to get used to  .  .  .  I always thought it was just fuzz.  But to see each individual green stalk, and to see the hair on my arm growing like trees, and birds flying through the air ...  It’s like starting a whole new life.”

Getting vision can be like that.  Especially when you look at the simple and ordinary things in life.  Just like the first Christmas Night.  So simple, yet so profound.  Look deep and you will see it.  Especially at this Christmas season.  Allow me to remind you one last time:

“Every moment has significance.

Every ordinary thing carries its own beauty.

Look deep and you will find it.”

* Story quoted from Max Lucado’s “God Came Near”