From the time we are a toddler, there are so many things we see that we want to do. We watch others and think it must be easy to do them and that we are ready. Little wonder we are shocked when we don’t automatically sort out how to ride our first tricycle or really can’t get the hang of our first skateboard. Our memory knows we seemed to have no problem learning to crawl or climb or walk but our memory doesn’t nudge us with how long it took and the steps to achieve it required practice to get it done. The goal to explore the world was so built into us that we kept at it.

Once those things were accomplished the world opened up one thing after another that looked like fun and not that hard, until we tried it. It didn’t work very well on the first try and maybe not the second or third. Some of us gave up and decided it wasn’t worth the time or potential injury to keep going. We didn’t have a clue that from toddler onward most anything we wanted to try to do would require the one thing we would not be excited about doing – practice. A lot of practice would be required if we were going to do it well or make it look as easy to others as it had to us before we started.

Catching a ball is naturally easier for some than others but to be the best catcher in the neighborhood no matter who throws the ball is another story. Hitting a ball thrown at us using a bat was even harder for most of us. Being able to handle a soccer ball with only our feet wasn’t as simple as we thought it would be either. Listening to the parents and coaches who were trying to help us sometimes made us wonder if we were the only ones who couldn’t quite get the knack of it. Would we always be the kid on the sidelines or on the bench? (Practice and more practice when we were lousy didn’t work well.)

And it wasn’t just about playing some kind of ball or managing to ride some kind of wheels. School was a place where we needed to practice just about everything from the time we arrived until the school day ended. Practice was needed to learn to write, read, count and how to use these to solve problems and answer questions.

If we were athletically inclined and more bent toward the arts, practice was required there as well if we expected to be able to glide across the dance floor or make beautiful music.

I was one of those who felt awkward with anything athletic, and self-consciousness didn’t help. My love of singing and music soon had me starting piano lessons when I entered third grade. I was eager to learn to play like my mother and cousin until I found myself sitting on a piano bench with a teacher who never smiled or made anything seem like fun. Correct fingering to play well wasn’t a practice I loved but I kept at it for a while until my mother realized I wasn’t going to progress very far and by sixth grade a saxophone was my instrument. Later it would be replaced by a typewriter when my mother was concerned I would get sick too often playing in a marching band at high school. (I am sure many of you have your own stories where practice was required and even if you loved what you wanted to learn, practice was NOT what you wanted to do.)

Most of us managed to learn enough or practice enough to move on from one grade to another looking forward to the end of school days and the hope that those dreaded practice sessions would come to an end. We had no idea that the need to practice something of some sort would be required of us all through adulthood. And why did we (do we) hate practice? Maybe because it means we need to discipline ourselves to some degree and lay down our preference to take the easy path of least resistance where we think little will be required of us. (Is that something humankind learned way back at the beginning – a dislike to reining in self and accepting discipline?) It just doesn’t come naturally for most of us. So, it is little wonder that memorizing scripture or taking our thoughts captive that require practice are things we put off doing or never do with as much excellence as we might.

By now we know (whether we admit it or not) that doing anything decently well requires discipline to practice the skill. And we still hate having to do it most of the time. But it is what is needed if we are to develop in our relational and spiritual lives. Setting aside time to commune with an unseen God in prayer and solitude to grow is one of those things we want to have happen and yet gets crowded out by all those other things we need or want to do that doesn’t require us to be still and quiet our hearts. And yet that is the very thing we were made for, and our soul needs to gain the sense of belonging and peace we long for.

“I believe our souls harbor a deep, nameless knowing we were created for something far better, something unshakably solid and enduring. That ‘knowing’ is what C.S. Lewis called our ‘lifelong nostalgia’ to be reunited with our Creator.

With ancient echoes of Eden whispering in our souls, we’ve been longing for belonging ever since. And with our sinful self-wills screaming for obedience, we’ve been trying to satisfy that longing every which way but God’s.”

Sandra Wilson

As a believer, Christ is nudging me every day to come aside to be with Him. It’s not a harsh voice that calls to me but a gentle quiet voice. He calls us because He knows it is what we need to live in this world that is no longer Eden. Christ modeled it for us when He walked the earth.

“His was a quiet heart. We see Him move serenely through all the events of His life – when He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He knew He would suffer many things and be killed in Jerusalem, He never deviated from His course. He had set His face like flint. He sat at supper with one who would deny Him and another who would betray Him, yet He was able to eat with them, willing even to wash their feet. Jesus in the unbroken intimacy of His Father’s love, kept a quiet heart.”

Elisabeth Elliott

You may think it was easy for Him because He was Jesus. Reconsider and remember that He was fully human and experienced life as we do and yet took time apart to nurture unbroken intimacy with His Father. It sustained Him and it can sustain us as we walk through difficult things and the ever darkening and fearsome times that are growing in the world. He invites us to practice, knowing it will give us a quiet heart when the world has never been noisier.

Easter and Passover have come and gone. Has life shifted with a sense of direction or are we much like the disciples walking along the Emmaus Road talking about the events of this season without shifting our priorities or recognizing the call on our lives? It can be easy to get right back at the things of this life without His life altering the course of our days or priorities.

We tend to be much more like those early disciples we read or hear about. Jesus invites us into the deep places with Him and the call He has for each of us and if we are listening to that at all, we might acknowledge that and keep walking along the dusty road we were on, distracted and weighed down with other things.

As I was listening to a recent podcast by author, John Eldredge, he referred to two areas that interrupt us often on the way to the deep places with Christ. One is what he calls the “shallow lands” known as the distractions bombarding us from moment to moment from dozens of sources. It’s the “white noise” we hardly even notice any more that shows up with our tendency to scan a page rather than read thoughtfully and reflect on the words we are reading. It’s that same stuff that causes us to listen to one another with only half an ear and find it difficult to attend for more than a few minutes to a message or the Bible in our laps. And when we do try to be with Him, we get into our routines and miss the intimacy with Him we long for.

Recently as I was having my devotional time with Him, I sensed Christ nudging me to lay down my journal and the Bible and pen as the Holy Spirit whispered, “Sit with me.” It seemed so unproductive, but clear that this wasn’t about praying or reading but rather just being in his presence, still before and with Him. How hard it can be to quiet my heart and just allow His presence to refresh and renew and repurpose my time. Yet that was how so many hours were spent by his disciples when Christ walked the earth. Study and reading the Bible is crucial to our foundation and praying for ourselves and others is as well, but He invites us into a deeper relationship with Him if we will just take time to move out of the “shallow lands.”

Eldredge describes the “midlands” as those areas that the Gospel of Mark describes as “the cares of this life.” It’s that passage about the soil that represents our own hearts and ends in the verse that reads as follows:

“…but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.”

Mark 4:19 (NIV)

How easy it is for that to apply to any one or all of us and never more so than in recent years where the life we thought of as “normal” has been upended by shifting values, increased crime and fear for safety, a pandemic that sought to destroy us and an uptick in other numerous illnesses and things that shifted us away from our dusty feet on the road to anxiety and fear that resisted our efforts to focus and still our hearts before Jesus.

How much differently we can be readied for the things that come at us if we are first laying aside even the trappings we bring into our times alone with Him by simply doing what Brother Lawrence reminds us of in his epic book, The Practice of the Presence of God. Do we really practice being in his presence? What would we hear if we did?

“Do not be discouraged by the resistance you will encounter from your human nature; you must go against your human inclinations. Often, in the beginning, you will think that you are wasting time, but you must go on, be determined, and persevere in it until death, despite all the difficulties.” 

Brother Lawrence

That solitude with Christ points us to the purpose of that day, our call, and the passion to move into it with a keen awareness of Him with us no matter what “the shallows” or “the midlands” throw at us. They remind us of what our focus is to be and after sitting with Him to get moving on that which He asks of us and be sure of what that is.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11: 28-29 (NIV)

“In order to form a habit of conversing with GOD continually, and referring all we do to Him, we must at first apply to Him with some diligence: but that after a little care we should find His love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty.” 

Brother Lawrence

What happened after I took his request to “come sit with me”? Ah, that is for just the two of us, but the results were to be propelled into my day with a fresh awareness of Him and alertness to be drawn to focus where He directed my attention. Those are the times I not only hear the birds singing despite “the shallows” and “the midlands” but also drop a note to someone I just kept putting aside or pick up a bud vase to brighten the day of my doctor’s receptionist on a recent visit. I am not only in awe of Him but moving with Him. And those are the very BEST days!

One of the things that likely impacts how you and I respond to evil stems from how we define it. It can be easy in the current culture to call something or someone “evil” because we disagree with it or them or if it or they offend us. We need to consider our label carefully before we bandy it about as true.

Until we are clear on what evil is and its source, we will fall prey to its influence and our responses will be tepid, misguided, or absent.

Evil is defined as something that is “morally wrong or bad, immoral or wicked deeds, embodying or associated with the forces of the devil.” It is not an opinion or a preference. Scripture is undoubtedly the best source of clarification of when that label is appropriate.

Because evil is so reprehensible it would seem we should be able to call it for what it is and confront it for what it is. Yet history shows in every nation and culture we can be slow to do that very thing if it isn’t impacting us directly. It can almost appear we have accepted the inevitable since we know that until the Lord returns, and evil is judged once and for all that it will be present on the earth.

We may feel powerless in the face of it despite the power of the Holy Spirit within us if we are God’s children. Perhaps we tremble in fear. The key is whether we seek His counsel and direction at such a time.

Two books I have read have brought evil sharply into focus. One focuses on the brave men and women in the Underground Railroad who risked death, fines, and imprisonment to help American slaves flee to Canada for freedom before the American Civil War. The other looks at men and women who risked similar consequences for trying to protect Jews less than a hundred years later.

Today despite our “instant” access to news we can forget nearly 215 million Christians face high persecution for their faith. We don’t hear much about that on the news and sometimes not in our churches.

When I consider how I might respond to evil I am drawn to the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 as well as others who responded with courage, wisdom, and discernment. Here are quotes from just a few of those who stood against evil.

William Wilberforce faced evil head on and wrote these words:

“A private faith that does not act in the face of oppression is no faith at all.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced difficult choices without compromise when he wrote and spoke. Here is one of numerous examples:

“We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

Elisabeth Elliot in the face of the grievous loss of her husband faced the evil that took him with love and forgiveness. Listen to her wisdom for us:

“We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.”

Solzhenitsyn left this powerful challenge to consider in The Gulag Archipelago:

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are replanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

How do we respond to evil?

We start by defining it for what it is and its true source and then seek the Lord for guidance on our response to it when we are faced with it. Above all, we must consider the words of Isaiah.

Isaiah admonishes us about the need to discern rightly what is evil and what is good:

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!”

Isaiah 5:20-21 (ESV)

Jennifer Dukes Lee’s new release, How to Love Your Morning, gives a new perspective on mornings whether you typically love them or not. It can be easy to say you’re a morning person, a night owl, or somewhere in between but this book presents a persuasive argument that we are all really morning people and page by page Jennifer sets out to prove it to you.

I never considered myself a morning person even though I am not the night owl that I once was. To me, a morning person woke up energized by the early hours of the day and jumped right into whatever his or her vibe was. I could say I was convinced I was not when I compared myself to my mother, a farmer’s wife, who was up by 5:00 AM and by 8:00 AM had accomplished more than many of us do by noon.

Maybe the best place to advocate for being a morning person is to share Jennifer’s definition of a morning person:

“1. Someone who has learned to approach morning with hope and intention, not defined by the hour she wakes up, but by how she wakes up. 2. Someone who sees the first moments of the day as a sacred threshold in which to love God with her heart, soul, mind, and strength.”

She goes on to add: “It’s not about when you wake up. It’s about who you wake up to be.”

If you really don’t see yourself as a morning person, don’t hesitate to pick up this book and read page by page. You’ll find no guilt or shaming here. Whether you drag yourself out of bed or take an hour to wake up over your coffee, there’s a lot to discover about mornings in How to Love Your Morning. And that includes the truth that we are not all the same and each season there are likely shifts in your morning and how you view them.

Loving your morning starts with embracing your personal rhythm, not trying to be someone you believe a morning person should look like. Our circadian rhythms vary and I think they get impacted by seasons. Although I used to call myself a “night owl,” I never met the rhythm my mother declared I was as an infant who reportedly had her days and nights mixed up.

This book introduces you to four different morning archetypes (a set of personality categories based on personal traits and interests). You’ll want to learn more about each one and take a quiz to discover where you fit: Daybreak Doer, Morning Mover, Meditative Mind, or Social Seeker.

Once you do that, you’ll discover how to create a morning ritual that fits best for you and allows you to thrive as a morning person and grow in your relationship with God. Jennifer will help you see various rituals whatever your season of life with morning guides for different life stages: college girl, (non-mom) working professional, office mom, stay-at-home mom, empty nester, retiree, or widow.

Throughout this book you’ll hear about Jennifer’s own journey through various seasons and her mornings. (No, she wasn’t someone who saw herself as a morning person at the outset.) That journey includes looking at how mornings are highlighted throughout the Bible and their significance time and time again.

For me, I discovered at one season that my mornings were so overwhelming that if I didn’t have at least a few minutes with scripture and a journal to go with my coffee that I would never really manage the day very well at all. Finding my ritual back then when I was working full-time meant planning in advance and then discovering that no matter how tough the day ahead was there was a sense I was not alone in the midst of it. Retirement changed how I viewed the ritual I had while working and over time I was aware that nothing was going as well as I needed it to go and I needed to go back to the drawing board and create a new ritual with some of the foundation of the old one.

I was blessed to be on the book launch team for How to Love Your Morning which means I got to read an advanced copy before the book was released April 7. It captured my heart with the insights and openness Jennifer shared and if this review has tempted you to consider finding out more about how to love your morning in whatever season you find yourself you can find this book as an audio book, Kindle, or hardcover at your favorite bookstore or library. To add to the resources there is also a Bible Study Guide you can get as well. You won’t be disappointed as you walk with Jennifer page by page.

Each chapter ends with a little morsel called “Morning Manna” and a Liturgy that fits the theme of the chapter.

Let me close with one such “Morning Manna:”

“When I meet with God at the first of my day, the rest of my day automatically has to level up to meet God.”

It can be so easy to forget the powerhouse that sits above our neck encased in our skull can grow and change throughout our lifetimes. This powerhouse is often a field of battle between negative and positive thoughts that are often whispering quietly without our notice or at other times loudly screaming at us. Those thoughts have created a mindset that began developing from our earliest years of life. Unfortunately, not everything that goes into the brew is truth, but we didn’t realize it and took some of those lies as facts. Their impact can affect us for years to come.

Perhaps that is why so many books have been written about how to improve or change the habits of our minds, to spiritually war against the enemy’s taunts that he plays out there. Psychology also seeks to help us with cognitive-behavioral techniques that help us identify negative self-defeating thoughts and tools to help us replace them with truth. No quick fix appears to be listed in any of the resources available.

One of the challenges for us is that our mindset ultimately gravitates into one of two types. These affect how we view every mistake, disappointment, setback, and failure and either move us forward toward hope or cause us to halt forward movement and give up.

Angela Duckworth in her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, identifies these two mindsets as a growth mindset or a fixed mindset.

If we have a growth mindset, we believe we can do better, that it’s possible if we work harder, get additional support, and receive encouragement that we can get smarter and do better. And guess what? We get up and try again! Research shows that if you have a growth mindset, you’ll be more likely to do better in school, enjoy better emotional and physical health, and have stronger, more positive social relationships with other people. It doesn’t mean we don’t fail or face challenges. What matters is our response to those defeats.

If we have a fixed mindset, we believe that those failures, setbacks, disappointments, and mistakes mean we don’t have the “right stuff”, aren’t good enough. And guess what? We give up. That belief can be so strong that we don’t ask for support, we don’t risk trying, we become resolved to a sense of our inadequate performances. We decide we don’t have what it takes!

One of the keys to determining which mindset we develop is how those around us respond when we slip up and make mistakes. The more powerful the position of authority the person has in our lives, the greater the impact not just of what they say or don’t say but also by the facial expressions they exhibit.

If we struggle with a fixed mindset about our spiritual lives, the enemy is gleeful because he knows that he can defeat our hope over and over again as soon as we get up from praying or reading in the Bible. Too often our spiritual lives also get stalled because of how our brothers and sisters around us respond to our struggle. Instead of real encouragement, we might experience quite the opposite for any number of reasons. Sometimes the person isn’t really accurately listening to us to hear the nature of the struggle. Sometimes the person doesn’t know enough of our story to understand why we were defeated….again!!

All of this reminds me of what I love about Paul’s words to the Corinthians:

“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and  take every thought captive to obey Christ,” 2 Cor. 10:5 ESV

2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV)

What we don’t always recognize is that eliminating negative patterns of thinking will not automatically bring about positive, “can do” patterns of thinking. We need to deliberately replace them with positive truth that we affirm to ourselves.

Archilbald Hart has written seven paraphrases of such truth based on scripture that gives a picture of what I mean so let me share them with you:

• “God loves me more than I can ever imagine, and I can never travel beyond the reach of this great love.” (Rom. 8:39)

• “No matter what my sin, God forgives me if I repent, confess, and return to Him.” (1 John 1:9)

• “There is nothing I can do that will cause God to turn away from me.” (Heb. 13:5)

• “Whatever I attempt to do, if it is God’s will for me He will give me the strength and wisdom I need to accomplish the task.” (Phil. 4:13)

• “If I seem to fail because circumstances are against me. God will always give me another opportunity if I return to the starting point.” ((Psa. 37:24)

• “God never wants me to give up. Never, never, never, never.” (Josh. 1:5,7,9)

• “Hating myself doesn’t make God love me more; it just makes it harder for me to see his love.” (Psa. 103:10-12)

God has created our powerhouse brains to be resilient and adaptable. If we have had a fixed mindset, replacing lies and negativity with truth from God’s Word can change it. We also can choose to spend time with those who encourage us and believe in us even when we don’t believe in ourselves and remember that it is those very struggles that God can and does use to produce more endurance and resilience in us.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ² Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Romans 5:1-5 (ESV)