We are bombarded by words on every side from more sources and devices than ever before. Those of us who write seem to have a special love of words and make a craft using them in one form or another. We use them to express ideas, thoughts, dreams, hopes, and more. But we all know words have many sides to them.

Words can comfort or words can wound. Words can woo or words can reject. Words can give blessing or words can bring cursing. Words can bring hope or words can bring despair. Words can propel us toward the future or keep us stuck in the past. Words can bring peace or words can bring war.

For some of us, words tumble out of our mouths easily about nearly anything and if someone is around us often, they know a lot about what is swirling around in our heads and hearts. Others of us find words difficult to craft to convey the thoughts and perspectives we may have been mulling over for some time. In such cases as these, it can be far too easy to make judgments about someone opposite from us about what they have said or not said.

But would you really have an accurate understanding of either type of person based on that point alone? What if I didn’t speak a word to you? What would my life say to you? Perhaps that is the more accurate evidence of what matters to me, what I believe, what I am passionate about, and gives you a window into the deepest parts of my heart, mind, and soul. For you see, it is those things that are harder to deny or keep hidden than what my words (your words) reveal about me (or you).

We have just passed a significant historical date in U.S. history on November 19. It was November 19, 1863, and Abraham Lincoln gave his memorable Gettysburg Address and left us with this thought to ponder as he stood looking over the battlefield of so much loss during the Civil War:

“ The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion …”

Abraham Lincoln

These famous words of Lincoln point to what creates the legacy of our lives even though it is the words he uses that we often quote and recall. We recall his words but maybe it is because they depicted his life as a man who lived his words and used words to convey his deepest beliefs. Is my life like that? Is yours?

So often we are shouting what we say we believe in the open forum today but if someone saw us on another day would those beliefs be evident? That should be the case, should it not? Would not my life more than my words point to what is most important to me? Sometimes we cannot make the case we so desperately want to make for lack of this consistency, this evidence of integrity.

When I think of people who have touched my life in some way and are no longer here, I become aware I recall fewer of the things they said to me and more of who they were. I recall how they made me feel when I was with them and if I found myself wanting to be more like them. I recall a quiet gentle spirit or an infectious smile that brightened so many days. I recall how they helped me believe in something bigger and more important than myself as well as their confidence I could be more than I was.

These are the people who helped shape my faith. I saw beyond any of their words what sustained them during some of the hardest and darkest challenges they faced. What I had heard them say about their faith was being challenged on every side and yet it did not waver in those most difficult moments. They were then more like the Christ they believed in even as He showed that repeatedly in his life on the earth when He was tested in the wilderness, when he hung out with the least of these out of love, and when He accepted the thief on the cross who cried out to Him in his final hours.

Our lives are not masterpieces of perfection but that doesn’t mean they cannot speak volumes of transformation. That stands out in the lyrics by Michael O’Brien written from a man whose life does not show perfection (not unlike many of us). Here are just a few to consider reflecting on what your life says or doesn’t:

“They say that a picture paints thousands of words 
And actions speak volumes where love is concerned 
I could preach you a sermon, hoping you would agree 
But in my silence would you see God in me? 

I’m gonna give you no arguments 
To try to make you believe 
Just evidence of the changes in me 

If I said nothing 
What would it say to you? 
If I testified by living the proof 
If I couldn’t speak the words 
I pray the truth would be heard 
What would my life say to you 
If I said nothing at all? 

I look in the mirror and it tells me the truth 
But you see my reflection in the things that I do 
If I’m a believer, then I’ll live my beliefs 
If I am a Christian, then Christ should be seen 

I’m gonna give you no arguments 
To try and make you believe 
Just evidence of the changes in me, yeah 

If I said nothing 
What would it say to you 
If I testified by living the proof 
If I couldn’t speak the words 
I pray the truth would be heard 
What would my life say to you 
If I said nothing 

Every eye will see His glorious face 
Every ear will hear His voice on that day 
He is Lord of all and forever will be 
But I pray that today you’ll see Him living in me, yeah 

If I said nothing 
What would it say? 

If I said nothing 
What would it say to you 
If I testified by living the proof 
If I couldn’t speak the words 
I pray the truth would be heard 
What would my life say to you 

If I said nothing 
What would it say to you 
If I testified by living the proof 
If I couldn’t speak the words 
I’d pray the truth would be heard 
What would my life say to you 

What would it say 
By living the proof 
If I couldn’t speak the words 
I pray the truth would be heard 
What would my life say to you 
If I said nothing at all? “

Commitment. Sometimes I wonder if the word has totally gone out of fashion or conversely, if we know what it means. The dictionary guides us in the word’s use – “the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc.” and “an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action.” Even a casual reading of the definitions suggests why it seems to have disappeared, but I wonder when all the pundits have finished debating what has happened to our current world if they miss this important attribute.

I grew up never having a question about what the word meant or looked like in action. My dad (born in November 1910) was the model of commitment in every area of his life. And his life circumstances didn’t make that easy. He was born the youngest of six on a family farm of 60 acres. By the time he was five years old his father died leaving the responsibility of the family to his older first-born brother. He watched as his brother at age 25 began to handle the farm and all that was needed for their mother, four sisters, and him. Everyone did his or her part to help. There was time for fun, but chores and helping out was understood to be everyone’s part.

But my dad’s father’s death wasn’t the only challenge the family faced. Economic times were never easy, and losses continued in various forms. Then his brother tragically fell from the barn roof and was killed when my dad was just 13 years old. He was enjoying school back then and looking forward to what high school might bring. Instead, he left school and followed the commitment of his brother and with the help of his uncles on neighboring farms, assumed the responsibility of farming to support his family while his sisters took jobs in the nearby town. It wasn’t an easy shift but years later I never heard my dad complain about those challenges or decisions.

How excited he was about this stand of corn in the field as a young teen. One could wonder what sustained him through such hard things like dreams set aside, childhood upended, and more. The answer would be in his faith. His family had always embraced faith as the value most vital to living life, but as I knew him as his daughter well into adulthood and knew his siblings as well, I could not help but notice that it was my dad’s faith that was the bright light in the family. It didn’t waver and stayed steady through the testing and the sacrifices he made (some chosen, and others required). He was selfless in gentle unassuming ways, generous in patience and serving.

My dad met my mother at church when she was just 13 and he was 19. They participated in activities there and in other farm gatherings. It was clear they cared deeply for each other, but he already had priorities. When she was old enough, he told her he would like to marry her, but he couldn’t take that step financially until he had money to buy a tractor to replace of the team of horses he used to farm. His family needed him to keep sustaining their survival with that and another job he took working at a brickyard nearby. And my mother understood. She knew what everyone else who knew my dad knew – his commitment was sure and true.

They married at 23 and 29 on an April spring day in 1939. The family needs meant my mother moved into the farmhouse with her mother-in-law and any unmarried sisters. Nothing about it was easy for her or my dad, but their commitment held. It held a year later in 1940 when they were looking forward to the birth of their first child and he died just 24 hours after he was born.

I was born three years later, and it was this heritage that was foundational to what I saw about commitment and faith through all the trials and losses that continued in their life together including the birth of a disabled son four years later. Serving, faith, and selfless devotion shaped their legacy and were hallmarks of their character that displayed commitment. That character was also marked by my dad’s dry subtle wit, a quiet voice, and a strong love of country, education, and principled values. He made sure that I had a college education though he had no idea how he could pay for it with his modest income. He gave me what he never was able to have himself and did so with joy versus envy or regret.

Sometimes the culture we live in now is referred to as the “me generation.” I didn’t coin that term, but it suggests what may be part of the clue about the erosion of commitment common now. If we are most interested in what we can get or achieve, our focus is less about sacrifice because it looks like we want to gain something from it. We are looking at what will benefit us, what pleases us, and how we can have the good life. And those aren’t bad things but point to a very different motive and mindset. It also raises questions about the role of faith in our lives that serves as the source of the value of commitment.

Commitment lives on if it is modeled by the lives we emulate whether they be ordinary men like my dad or those known by thousands of others. And commitment to One higher than ourselves, values that matter and withstand the test of time are what are needed by the collapsing world around us if it is going to survive. And that doesn’t come from a program or government or course in any educational institution. It comes from a heart transformed by the only One who can do such a miraculous thing.

It’s not about striving for perfection or even looking for it but adjusting our focus on what leaves a legacy that lives on into eternity.

Say the word after and there may be a variety of impressions, experiences, and emotions that follow. It’s one of those words we meet early in childhood and sometimes connects with the word before that I wrote about a few days ago. You likely can think of many examples from those earliest memories. You likely heard that you could watch a favorite TV show after your homework or after you finished your chores. You may have heard you could have that treat your mouth was drooling for after you finished your vegetables or whatever else you were not so excited about eating.

There were other places you heard it often as well. There were things you wanted to do or get. Maybe it was a special bicycle, a BB gun, a special dollhouse, or one of those expensive dolls another friend had, and you heard one or both parents say, “After you’re older.” As a teenager you still were haunted by needing to wait for things until after your grades came up, after you got a job, or after you got your license. In all these cases, the word after brought with it anticipation and longing for some time ahead.

Your imagination was also impacted by stories that were read to you or later that you read yourself that ended with that wondrous phrase ‘happily ever after.’ Every girl longing for a prince to appear knows that one very well.

That hope for a prince to sweep us off our feet often got tucked away inside us and didn’t die away easily as we looked at outward appearances of those who might look like a prince. They influenced our choices on both sides of a choice so we either became more tentative looking for perfection or had blurry vision that nudged us to make choices and discover later this was not a prince at all and be surprised we missed that fact.

As we got older, we became aware that not all anticipation was positive. Sometimes (perhaps many times) after meant uncertainty. Somehow, we should have recognized that before because we never really know what after will bring our way because it hasn’t happened yet, and we are not in control of it (even if we have a certain amount of influence on it).

We make plans for a special event while knowing that we can’t guarantee that a storm will not upend the party planned for outdoors. We need a medical procedure and after learning all we can about it and listening to what the medical team tells us to expect after it is over, we miss some of what is said. Somehow we filter the most positive outcome because that is what we want or hope, but they cannot guarantee that outcome and when we have more pain, recovery takes longer, or creates yet another issue, we see the fickle nature of after.

The most adventurous of us long for certainty and one thing we cannot miss is that life is filled with uncertainty (even in areas where we think we have control). We recognize that more as we age but that doesn’t make it any easier. Dreams we had don’t work out quite the way we hoped whether in our relationships, our jobs, or our health. Curve balls keep coming. And we are more likely to recognize we have been looking forward a long time without realizing how much more time now is behind us than ahead of us.

Those curious thoughts about what’s out there beyond this planet and all we know of living when we gazed at the stars from our backyards as we were growing up begin to take on a more serious set of reflections if they haven’t occurred previously. What happens when these bodies wear out and our lives come to an end. Is it really an end for us or is there something else we discover? Some of us have settled that when we were younger. We were taught or heard there was life after the one we were living and what we did or were on our way there mattered. Of course, there were other opinions, but moving further into adulthood means we need to navigate what we believe and what our hope is based on. Do we believe and accept none of this universe was by accident? Do we see ourselves as part of something bigger, a larger story than just our own that we have been adding to each day?

Life keeps us distracted by more than a few things and if we are fortunate, someone or something lets us in on how many minutes we can waste looking at others for our identity, comparing what we have to them, looking at the small stuff and never taking time to check out the interior world of our heart which is where real life matters most.

“In the end, we’re all looking through a keyhole at eternity as we try to figure out our lives today. Don’t be distracted by how different you are from everyone else. Our hearts were meant to beat together, not the same.

If you want to dazzle heaven, stop being distracted being everyone else. Go be you.”

Bob Goff

Yes, we are puzzling now about many things. The Apostle Paul gives an observation about that:

“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”

I Corinthians 12:13 (NIV)

If we are honest, his words are truer than we take time to consider. Many things are blurry. If you accept and believe in a spiritual world, then you know that we are living in two worlds now – the one we can see and the one that is unseen. What we know about the unseen world leaves more blank spaces than we wish, but if we believe in the One who is the creator of both worlds then we can get glimpses of it in the last will and testament He left for us – the Bible. He gives us peeks into what it looks like in the unseen world, in eternity. For us who are limited by what we can see, hear, touch, and taste, that requires faith.

And you see, that makes all the difference. Our creator points to what is still being created now that Jesus talks about after He rises from the dead before ascending into heaven. He gives those early disciples and us a promise on which to place our faith and hope.

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

John 14:3 (NIV)

No, we don’t know what all that looks like except for the word pictures Jesus left us, but one thing that has evidence beyond the Bible and shows up in historical record of the time He spent on earth – his promises are true.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Hebrews 13:8 (NKJV)

If we believe in Him, we can look at the after differently because we know He is waiting on us, planning for us, and that eternity is as real as any part of this physical world (even if you can’t see it right now).

“If you think of your life as a book that’s being written, start taking better notes. It will become a masterpiece one sentence at a time.”

Bob Goff

Now is the gift of the present nestled between before and after. It is here for the briefest of time and how we use it and steward it shapes the after even as it has been shaped by the before. In my world the now means autumn that is racing toward winter as the show-stopping colors of leaves have nearly all fallen from the trees and blown from lawn to lawn in our neighborhood giving the lawns a final shower of color. This now is a favorite season of mine but as November marches forward and days are colder and grayer, I delight in the now.

Many of us talk of enjoying the moment we are in while too often letting it slip through our fingers in our distractions and involvement with the details of life that call out for our attention. It can be easy to miss pausing long enough to take note of the sun’s placement in the sky, the lilt of the voice of someone we love, the taste of the coffee we gulp down to awaken us when we are drowsy, and so many other things. But these are the things when life is reduced to the basics that we savor the most when the debris of so much we don’t need is swept away.

“Sometimes we are so busy looking up and looking forward trying to figure out the next moves in our lives – or looking backward at all the places we have been – that we don’t look down and figure out where we actually are.”

Bob Goff

Where am I in now? Where are you and why is it important to know?

It’s important because it represents life and what we do with it has consequences. If we use the now to squander our money, neglect our relationships, leave our talents and gifts gathering dust on the shelf, we will have devalued the gift of the present, the gift of now. That doesn’t mean we should be racing around every minute of the now, but rather realizing it is slipping like sand in an hourglass. Putting off what we have now for another time presumes we are the author of time and know how much we have ahead of us. The evil one who seeks to defraud us of life knows that well and uses all manner of tactics to keep us from taking the gift of now and breathing life into it.

“…evil wants to distract us from expressing our gifts and doing what we are meant to do. Darkness is rarely content to wound us with one decisive blow when it can injure us equally with a thousand paper cuts.”

Bob Goff

Most of us are familiar with the pain a small paper cut can create. It nags at us and causes us to lose focus for other things until it heals. Paper cuts Goff speaks of come with things like regret at a hasty word spoken without thought in anger, missed opportunities to speak a word of love or encouragement to someone, or even to set aside our spiritual nurture for too much time scrolling on the devices that surround us.

We hear reminders about the important things, the things that really matter and how our focus should be on those very things while paper cut after paper cut in all forms pull us aside from them. The evil one would choose to do that because he knows it is in these other things, we will find joy. Reminding ourselves of that brings us to the powerful story in Nehemiah where the debris from the destruction of Jerusalem in the 5th century is the focus of his now. His focus and purpose are to rebuild it despite being surrounded by enemies who would dissuade him and those who help him. He tells the people with nothing not to grieve in Nehemiah 8:10 and ends the verse with the words “the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

We are a part of the “information age” where it is accumulated and disseminated in more forms than ever imagined 50 years ago. Facts are important but we don’t need more facts and all the questions about their veracity. Our quest for them has not brought us more kindness, unselfishness, or joy.

“We need to block our view of the things that hardly matter at all, stop returning to the patterns that do not serve our larger objectives, start recognizing what is temporary and transitory, and instead focus intensely on the things that will last forever: our faith, our families, and our purposes.”

Bob Goff

Amid all that, Paul reminds us of about now:

“For he says, “I heard you at the acceptable time, and in the day of salvation I helped you.”^[a] Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation!”

2 Corinthians 6:2 (NET)

What will you do with now?

What fuels your imagination? Do you even value your imagination amid daily life and demands on your time, roles, skills, and abilities?

For too many of us our imaginations get set aside early in our elementary school years when learning information and developing thinking skills becomes the primary goal of education. Clearly, they are important, but we must never undervalue imagination. It is one of God’s great gifts to us and for everything we enjoy about the things we see and use now, imagination on the part of someone played a key component. Someone imagined something that did not yet exist and how to make it into a reality.

In Patti Callahan’s book, Once Upon A Wardrobe, there is a quote attributed to Albert Einstein that says, “the true sign of intelligence was not knowledge but imagination.“

There are more than one or two things that bring my imagination into action. Some of them include music that transports me beyond the space I am in while listening to it, nature’s wonder on display in every season and landscape, the intricacy of created humankind, art in all its forms, and of course, words written by authors who can transport the reader to places they have never been.

One thing that can stunt imagination is exhaustion with little time for allowing our senses to take in the things that are not work or duty related. If our schedule is driven by demands from dawn until late at night, there is little to no time for thinking about anything except those demands.

Another thing that stunts our imagination is to not value it or believe we have it because it may not (likely won’t) look like anyone else’s. Some of us are imaginative in practical things in the kitchen, building something, or designing something while others of us are imaginative in abstract things that comes from somewhere we cannot always even name. Beyond all the things listed above as sources, there are times it seems to emanate from somewhere deep inside of us. These are a part of our story and who can really say exactly where a story begins? Often a story comes to us in bits and pieces that do not necessarily fit into one theme or story and then when we aren’t expecting it, connections happen and a story flows out from those bits and pieces. That is how our lives develop as well.

Why is imagination important beyond development of all kinds of inventions and things to make life better in some way?

“Reason is how we get to the truth, but imagination is how we find meaning.”

Patti Callahan

I have heard someone say on more than one occasion that they never read fiction and see it as trite or less valuable than other genres in their local library or bookstore. It can intimidate some who enjoys reading the latest novel or a classic from decades ago.

“With stories, I can see with other eyes, imagine with other imaginations, feel with other hearts, as well as with my own.”

Patti Callahan

One of the gifts of a written story is how the author sits down at a computer or with pen and ink and often without a clear direction of what he or she wants to write and yet as the words come and fall into sentences and paragraphs, they take shape. Later when we read them, they can give words to something we only had a sense of before we read their words.

All writers are first of all readers. They become immersed in words, ideas, themes, and adventures that serve as fertilizer for their own imaginations and stories. If you are a journal person, as you sit down to write, what helps you about that process that is usually very personal? Doesn’t it help to take it from deep inside and put it down so you can better see it and sort it out?

“Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills.”

Patti Callahan

Stories also help us in another way. There are many parts to a story, just as our lives have many parts and many seasons. Our stories all have different themes over a week, year, and lifetime. Reading stories reminds us of important realities.

“All stories have the dark and scary part… Stories have their own truth.”

Patti Callahan

Because of that, we can be encouraged that it is like our life as well. It can have dark and scary parts, parts that do not make sense and yet they bring us to truth and remind us of the truth that life is hard. The stories remind us that it is universally true and not some specific way life is out to get us.

Douglas Gresham said in a Zoom chat I was part of before Once Upon A Wardrobe was released, “Books are living things. What hits us one time, hits us another way another time.”

I think that is perhaps why we may read the Bible every day of our lives and discover something different with each reading. A word or verse can seem as if we have never read it previously as our experiences are different and the Holy Spirit illuminates a different part of what God is trying to say.

Life is nearly always busy for great parts of it. Make time to find a good story and sit down and let it take you on an adventure that inspires you and gives you a new lens to see your life, the world, and God from a different vantage point.