And everywhere I went, I met people who, regardless of their religious beliefs, were looking for the same things: a connection to God, a desire to mean something, and a way to stay alive even when dreams die. Angry Conversations with God, p. 233 I’m worried about the quality of […]
What is it about being young? I saw my 9 years of age buddy today. I’ve known him since he was about 4. He loves the Red Sox, Celtics and even the New England Revolution. He plays hockey sometimes, too. He plays shortstop for his baseball team and let me […]
As a kid, I always thought I was behind and needed that extra hour to catch up. Jim Jones once told me, “No matter how many shots you take, somewhere there’s a kid out there taking one more. If you dribble a million times a day, someone is dribbling a […]
There’s a scene in the wonderful film “Smoke Signals,” where an alcoholic man who has never really done a noble thing in his life saves an infant from a burning house. As the baby’s parents are trapped and dying up on the second floor, they throw a chair through the […]
His voice was like thunder now. “You put your characters through hell. You put them through hell. That’s the only way we change.” – Donald Miller quoting Robert McKee My affection for Andrew Peterson is deep and longstanding. It is nearly impossible for me not to love anything the man […]
I’m usually not one to like what everyone else likes. I didn’t think “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” was especially funny. I hated “The Shack”. I laugh at things many people consider strange. I like musicians most people have never heard of. Donald Miller is the exception. A lot of […]
The curse undone, the veil is parted. The garden gate will be left unguarded. – Jason Gray
Editors Note: In an effort to make this post as difficult to read as possible, I’ve added underlining, bold, italics, CAPS LOCK, and footnotes. 1 I have no idea what this will look like in a reader. I had a pretty hard time choosing whether to go with the grape […]
Listening to this album is like sinking your soul into a thick, rich and moist slice of triple layered German chocolate cake. It’s that good. This was my first taste of Jason Gray’s music. I would go back for more, but I’m still trying to finish the piece that is […]
I don’t know what you do up here in Northern Indiana. Where I came from, on Friday nights, we used to get in our Dads’ trucks cause they used to build those trucks so that you could run over anything and it wouldn’t hurt them. You know, the old gravel roads, they just ran straight for miles and miles and miles. You never had to turn your car because you were always going in one direction until you wanted to go in another direction and then you had to wait until you came to a road to make a turn and then you’d make the turn and go straight in that direction for a long ways.
It was pretty easy driving, so what we always liked to do is go out as far in the country as we could get to where there weren’t any houses or anything that we could find. Then, you’d go as just about as fast as you dared going and you’re turn the lights out. Then the truck, in the middle of the night… It wasn’t a real smart thing to do. But luckily, they built those trucks real sturdily. And our dads always just thought they were getting beat up out in the field. They didn’t know it was in someone else’s field.
So one time I was driving from Philadelphia to Miami, Florida. I was going down Interstate 95 through Maryland, which I don’t ordinary think of as being a beatuiful part of the world. But it’s shocking how beautiful Maryland is. Of course, it was about 2 o’clock in the morning and it was a full moon and so just about any place is pretty at 2 in the morning with a full moon if you’re all by yourself.
And I started thinking about how we used to do that when we were kids. How we used to turns those lights out and drive a little bit too fast on gravel roads. And I wondered if I could still see by moonlight like I could when I was younger. So, I looked around and made sure there weren’t any cars and clicked them off right there in Maryland. Only this time, I didn’t drive too fast because I wasn’t quite so young anymore. I had gotten in the habit of trying to soak up things instead of speed by them.
Looking at Maryland I began to think of just the goodness that I was not blind. Sometimes you have to go to Maryland to remember what a joy it is to see. But then I began to think about even if I was in the middle of Brooklyn – with that moon – if there was a power shortage and there weren’t any lights to interrupt – probably even Brooklyn would be pretty with that moon. I remembered how it used to look when you’d drive in the spring and the corn was just starting to come up and the rows were real short.
You know, sometimes we think that everything is changing. But I’ll tell you what – the same moon is up there tonight. The same stars that Abraham saw – they’re all up there. The same God that put them there and made them shine, He’s still there too. And I don’t know what life has for you. I don’t know what life has for me. But I know this: I know that God is good and I know that God does not lie. I know that God has given us the gift of our lives. Sometimes we wish He would have given us someone else’s life. But He chose to give you your life. Don’t despair of it.
Rich Mullins
