Renovation

Merideth, my wife and I are on a vacation.  We hadn‘t planned it for long, but our time-share week was about to expire and I had earned a week of vacation so here we are in Florida.  It is so good to be together, to reconnect.  I hadn’t realized how challenging being apart has been for us.  I’ve met people in Virginia who have been deployed for years at a time without seeing their families, so I won’t complain, but being here together has been so good and it reminds me what a challenge it has been to be separated after being together for 35 years.

One of the things I am doing here is reading a book suggested by a friend: A Work of Heart: How God shapes Spiritual Leaders  by Reggie McNeal.  I have been asking for a while what it is that God is doing with the call I felt and in His work in me.

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Trusting God

Not long ago my daughter sent me a link to an interview between Anderson Cooper and Rev. Gregbory Boyle, a man who evidently runs a program for down-and-out folks.  In the interview they talk about not being taken advantage of or not ‘being used.‘   Boyle says he avoids being taken advantage of by “giving his advantage away.”  His logic is that people can’t take what he’s already given.  The result, he impplies, is that the atmosphere of the center he runs ‘is soaked with redemption.”  Now that is something I’d like to be characteristic about the endeavors of my own life.  But is it accomplished simply by giving an advantage away?  From my life experience, I’m not so sure.