Significant Time

A couple of days ago, I received a great email from Amy, who I consider to be a great friend. Amy was in my student ministry years ago, and she is now in NYC doing great things. Outside of the random, "we are both in Dallas, so lets catch up" occurrences, we touch base via facebook and email. We don't correspond regularly. However, she will always be one of those significant friends in my life.

Significant because there is so much good in her and because of the significant time we spent working life out. Great conversations ensued about God, church, family, authenticity, hypocrisy, meaning, purpose, forgiveness and grace.

Blessed again, today, I received a phone call from Craig, who I haven't heard from in a while. Craig is another one of those friends who, like Amy, shared real life with me. Together, we worked out many of the same things in the context of ministry and fatherhood.

Wrestling through those topics with others are gifts from God, and I'm convinced that we too often take those opportunities for granted. It's so easy to live our lives "being productive" and "getting through the day," that we ultimately miss the heart of the people right in front of us. Worse than that, we don't cultivate our own heart, and we become emotionally numb. Without correcting that way of living, we end up with lots of acquaintances, but with no REAL friends.

So, as a result of an email and phone call, I thank God for Amy and Craig and others just like them. I'm thankful for all the people who God has used to shape me. I'm also re-energized to evaluate my time, shifting more of it away from the urgent, and onto the significant. Life really is too short to do otherwise.

Making Memories

I just finished Donald Miller's, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. It was a good read, and I recommend it. Somewhere in that book he wrote of the value of the "setting" of our life's story. As when we remember scenes from a movie, we may not remember what was being spoken, but we do remember the scene. The main point of this portion of Miller's book is that it is important to get out of the routine settings of our life to make memories. Setting is important.

With that in mind, I took Michael deer hunting last weekend. I hardly ever hunt...only when someone makes the opportunity available and I can make the time. Michael has never been hunting. We went and had a great time sitting in the stand together. I didn't care if we didn't even see a deer. The experience was the goal.

But then we did see a deer (a nice 5 point) and "we" shot it. Our setting moved from the stand into the woods where we found him dead. We drug him out, harvested the meat, and took his head home. Then our setting changed again to the back yard, where we boiled the deer head, preparing a "European skull mount".

All of this has been a great scene that we'll never forget. Good times...

Learning Contentment 2

Thanks to all for the emails and input. From conversations with you and from listening to others, I've worked out some of what it means to learn contentment. If you are interested in the message, then go to: http://istrouma.org/mediaplayer_1 and click on "sermon series" and then go to the sermon on 12/27/09.