We worshipped Jesus. We read the scriptures. We prayed. There was laughter and hugs and coffee. God’s presence was present. We lingered there together. It was diverse and beautiful and genunine. My soul breathed slowly and deeply.

Maintaining this rhythm with God’s children felt good and right. Real bodies in a real room in real time. It reset my inner compass towards the divine. I was reminded of the bigness of God and the precious smallness of my life that is held in his love.

“No” to a really good thing that may not be the best thing.

“No” to an unhealthy and harmful thing.

“No” to being pressured into doing something you do not want to do.

“No” to silent suffering and false peace.

“No” to hallucinations about the past, the present, or the future.

Doing everything in less time is a poor goal.

There was a guy who used to drive his daugther to school in a golf cart. It probably took that dad a quarter of the time that it took me to walk my son. Both of our kids got to school on time, but I got four times the conversation. And way more than four times the exercise.

Sure, some things are best done as quickly as possible. But not as many things as we might assume.

In the hands of the Gardener who wants to get his hands dirty in the garden of your life.

To till the earth. To remove stones and debris. To mend the soil with compost. To plant seeds. To shape furrows for water. To root out weeds.

It’s no coincidence that the Bible itself begins and ends with a Garden. The story of Scripture runs from first blooms of Eden to the orchard of New Jerusalem—with no shortage of deserts in between.

It is yielding to Jesus. It is learning to follow his lead. It is learning to rest in the reality that if I am to “improve” at all, it is going to be his work in me rather than my work for him. Spiritual transformation is much more about what God is forming in me than in what I am doing. I was helpless to help myself; Christ came to do for me what I could not do for myself.

That, in a nutshell, is one way of preaching the gospel. After the initial ego-sting wears off, it really is good news.

The gospel, according to certain tellings, can sound and look a lot like self-improvement. And to a self-help obsessed culture, (fueled by an industry that is worth about $13 billion dollars annually), it is no surprise when we are drawn to it. It is no surprise that so many of our “discipleship programs” are really just “self-help programs” couched in New Testament language, cherry-picking verses or stories that give a Christian seal-of-approval to self-help ideas.

My earliest understanding of prayer was that in prayer I was to ask something of God: “Heal my headache. Help my friend. Cause us to succeed. Provide for this need.” The evidence that this “worked” was “answered prayer”—whatever I had asked for actually happened in some way.

Then, I came to understand prayer as more of a conversation, in which I could ask questions and listen to God’s response: “What should I do in this situation? Which option should I choose? Who should I share your love with? How should I spend my free time today? What is your calling on my life?” The evidence that this “worked” was a sense of purpose and direction, greater confidence in what I was to do.

In more recent years I am understanding prayer as a space in which I can be with God. “__________________.” Silence. Not many words at all, if any. The evidence that this “works” is… well… hmm…

To be honest, it’s so deeply and intimately beautiful that I find it hard to describe in a single sentence.

I’ve heard it said that the most loving thing we can do for another person is to give them the gift of our presence. Our undivided attention. To simply be with them. Not working on a project, not solving a problem, not dreaming about the future, not engaging in anything tangible or productive—just being.

So it is that we are invited to love God: by bringing our whole self to be present to him.

After all, (as I have also heard it said), he created human beings in his own image, not human doings.

If you’ve been a leader for more than a minute, you know the pain of someone leaving. Someone uno longer able or willing to follow you. Someone in disagreement with your ideas, your practices, your decisions, your new haircut, your whatever. It stings every time—even those times when the sting of loss is mixed with a sigh of relief.

Sometimes people leave your leadership because you messed up. Own up to that. Learn from it. Process it internally; make changes externally. Move on.

But sometimes people leave precisely when you’re doing your best.

One of Jesus’ most poignant and classsic teachings in the gospel of John comes in chapter 6: After miraculously feeding thousands of people using only a little boy’s lunch, he sees a teachable moment and says, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And what was the result? Being Jesus, we might expect that there would be thousands of converts after such a display of power and a powerful sermon. But no. Whatever credibility his food services had gained him was quickly lost as the conversation turned to cannibalism.

Sometimes we have to get out from under the shadows of our mothers and fathers in order to do what our Heavenly Father is doing.

There comes a point where what was done in the past no longer serves the present. There comes a point where must reckon with the fact that our emulation has become parody, to the loss of our true selves that God has created us to be for the sake of the world.

Our mothers and fathers were themselves for their world; we must be ourselves for our world. We cannot be them for our world. That is an impossibility because it is based in non-reality. The only reality we have in which to walk in the light of God is now. Not in the past. Not in the future. Now.

That is, in the present and tangible world. In real times and real places. In the here and now.

God is not encountered in the past, although our memories can perhaps recall where he was close to us in times and places that we did notice his presence or activity.

God is not encountered in the future, although we can anticipate his presence with us.

God is not primarily found in the interior world. If we ignore his presence to us in the outer world of creation, people, seasons, circumstances, and even our own bodies, we are in danger of missing him and also of making our own thoughts and emotions into our gods.

Are a decent sign that your ego has been oversized. Or overactive. Or in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe all of the above.

Ego, sense of self, is not evil. It’s an integral part of what it means to be human. It serves as a sort of dashboard for our life: when a warning light comes on, pay attention.

A gut punch is a sign that some humility and contentment are needed, like symptoms of a serious illness. A re-clarification of exactly who you are (and are not), of what your activity ought to be be (and ought not to be), of where your place is (and is not).