All In A Days Grace

  Many of us have seen the bracelets or the t-shirts with the letters WWJD. “What would Jesus do?” As Christians we sometimes laugh at those four trendy letters that are meant to remind us to handle life’s obstacles in the way Jesus would. Conflict is definitely an obstacle that most of us simply just try to avoid. Yet, if we’ve lived life long enough, we come to realize that conflict is usually unavoidable. The opportunity for conflict arises in every aspect of our lives; at work, school, in families, with friends and yes, even in our churches. The interesting thing is that as Christians we many times approach conflict as if we have no point of reference or guide. We may ask the question “What would Jesus do?” but are we prepared to live into the answer? When we talk about being Jesus in the world, we sometimes only equate that to helping, healing and caring. We don’t often enough relate Jesus to conflict resolution and so when a conflict arises, we, well…. just try to dodge...

My husband and I received a puzzle for Christmas from a friend. We were excited because neither one of us had put a puzzle together since we were kids! We were also looking forward to it because our busy schedules had not given us a great deal of time to do anything “together”. This, we though would be a great time to reconnect. So we cleared some space on the dinning room table sat down together and dumped the puzzle out. 1000 small pieces scattered out before us. We worked together to turn all the pieces upright since upon pouring out of the box not all of the puzzle landed picture up. Once all the pieces were on the correct side we both surveyed the task in front of us. It was interesting how immediately we each put together a plan in our mind of “how” we were going to go about putting this puzzle together. I had decided that I would organize all the pieces according to design. My husband decided he would collect all the pieces with a straight edge in order to put together the “...

A pastor friend of mine reached out to myself and another pastor friend the other day to talk about planning. He was trying to plan ahead for the coming year. Typically, churches plan out six months to a year ahead. Many times, planning teams sit around after Easter planning Christmas and sit around Christmas planning Easter. Some might call it a cycle of assumption; being so bold as to assume what you’ll be doing six months from now. I think there was a time that most of us did this without thinking too much about it.  Those of us who get excited breaking open our new planner each year and filling it with the dreams of the year to come, "get" this cycle of assumption. The big question is do you write in pen or pencil in your yearly planner? I tend to lean more towards hope than assumption, so I use pencil. Let me just say there was a whole lot of erasing going on in my 2020 planner. So, getting back to these pastor friends of mine. Our conversation was about planning and bas...

  I received a beautiful bouquet of roses from a friend, so I put them up on the counter to enjoy. Eventually the roses faded and died so I took the vase from the counter and proceeded to throw them away. As I grabbed the bouquet, I realized that although the roses had died, the babies breath (the tiny white flowers) that had also shared the vase were still fresh! Why throw away the whole thing when there was still so much beauty to appreciate? I pulled out the babies breath, freshened the water and put the vase back on the counter to enjoy. Funny how no one ever orders a bouquet of babies breath, yet they are so beautiful in and of themselves. As I looked at these precious delicate flowers, I thought what a shame it was that they never took the center stage of the bouquet. They are never considered the starring role, but seem to always be cast as the supporting role; yet they serve such an important purpose. They enhance the beauty of any cluster of flowers. They created a bea...