Before you head off into your weekend, here are three quick hitting things that I have read and been thinking about this week. Hope they are as helpful and challenging for you as they have been for me.
Have a great weekend!
Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.”
Friedrich Neitzsche
I’ve been in a weird devotional place lately. The best times of prayer have been associated with walking. Other than that, I am having a difficult time lining up my thoughts long enough to even make a sentence. So, I walk. The mind and body connection is, for me, a real connection. Here is the deal. We all have seasons where prayer is more difficult than others. It is in these times that remaining committed to the practice is more important than what gets “done”. Perhaps what is being done is God is allowing your faith to grow by a season of dryness instead of perhaps your pride growing in a season of abundance.
I have learned that most things in life are better and more beautiful not linear but fractal. Love especially.
The Marginalian website and newsletter by Maria Popova
Fractal. A geometric figure having the same statistical character as the whole. It is a web of snowflakes that make up a snow covered driveway that we will soon be shoveling! Uniqueness and connectedness all in the same package is the power of fractal. Just like the community of believers. Connected via faith. Uniquely created, gifted, and impassioned. As we become messily connected through relationship beautiful possibilities exist.
Obedience is the back side of love. Love is structured by obedience.
A Theology of Love by Mildred Bangs Wynkoop
Love being structured by obedience. As with our bodies’ posterior chain needing to be strong, so to is the back side of our faith which provides balance and stamina for the journey. Maybe we can think of obedience as a trellis in which the whole of our relationship with God and each other hangs. Submission is closely related to obedience as is humility. Willfully entrusting our lives to God’s design is undertaken by obedience. When is the last time you or I have done something not because we wanted to but out of obedience? That may be a sure sign of strength in our relationship with God.
todd nelson 