“Practicing the presence of God is a skill, a habit you can develop.  Just as musicians practice scales every day in order to play beautiful music with ease, you must force yourself to think about God at different times in your day.  You must train your mind to remember God.”
–Rick Warren

Whoa! The iPhone rocks. It rocked before, but it really rocks this morning. Why? Because now I can post to my www.singinthelight.com blog from my iPhone. Talk about convenient! But how does that affect all or any of you?

In my simplistic and perhaps naïve hope, maybe I will stop more often and write in my blog. Granted, it doesn’t come right to your mailbox like this email. Yet, I am excited about having at least a tool to make capturing thoughts more randomly. What? Pen and paper? Oh, I have a journal or two but taking the time to pull it out, carry it around. So much. I mean I’ll do good for a while, but then… I get lazy. Now… I always have my iPhone with me. When was the last time my journal left my nightstand?

Spending time with God isn’t about convenience. Or it shouldn’t be. But it often is. I’d spend time with God… if I didn’t have this meeting or deadline. I’d talk with so and so about their walk… but they live so far away… or gosh, I’d have to turn off the big game on TV. I’d capture this thought… but my journal is at home and I’m not.

I’m not saying this new app for the iPhone will draw me closer to God, but it is a tool. And somehow, I think God smiles on anything that enables us to slow down and focus on Him. Enables us to practice the presence.

“But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more.” –  Psalm 71:14, The King James Version

In His service,
Keith

“I venture to say that the greatest earthly blessing that God can give to any of us is health, with the exception of sickness.  Sickness has frequently been of more use to the saints of God than health has.”
–C. H. Spurgeon

Interestingly this came at me a different way this morning. Lori and I have been dealing with one our greyhounds who has been sick. Having that going on, and then reading Spurgeon’s words this morning made me think that not only does my own sickness draw me closer to Him, but also the sickness of others. When others are physically ill, I feel compelled to pray for them, hence drawing me closer to God. Could it be that when I am sick, others are drawn closer to God in their prayers for me? It really isn’t about me, is it?

In His service,
Keith

Yesterday I made my nearly weekly trip to the yard waste facility here in Bellingham. Okay, I guess technically it is the Clean Green Transfer Station, but that isn’t essential to this story.

On my way home from there, I was one of many cars rounding a corner near our house. Suddenly all the cars in front of me came to a stop. The car at the front of this line up was a car that I recognized as belonging to one of the houses on the block. As I looked at the driveway where this car was trying to turn in to, there said a car blocking the driveway. And about 5 feet from the car was an elderly man, probably in his 70s, out smelling the many roses that lined the driveway. Roses that I had never even noticed before. The car at the front our lineup decided to pass on and circle back, and the line soon dissipated and I went on home. Home, but more aware of how fast I move through this world of His.

All this just to say that God poignantly gave me a visual of “stopping to smell the roses”. It was priceless. Despite my rampant pace, I need to remember that God is in the details. More than ever, I need to slow down my own pace so that I can experience more of God’s fullness.

As I read this verse this morning, I thought of those roses, of that man smelling them:

“The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.” –Proverbs 22:4, The Revised Standard Version

In today’s fast-paced world it takes a certain humility to slow down, to say there is something more important than what I am rushing to, or from. And in that slowing down, I will experience more of riches, honor… and life. Did you know that Webster lists one of the definitions of “humble” as “reflecting”? I didn’t know that.