I saw a tweet the other day by Christine Caine; “Don’t get stuck somewhere you should only be passing through.”
It immediately struck a chord with me, because that is a fear of mine. Here I am trying to become a serious, or at least a somewhat serious writer, but will that truly ever happen for me? Will I ever be able to write something that makes people think, or something that speaks truth into their lives? That encourages them or even makes them laugh? I have no idea, but the path I am on means that I am at least going to try. There is a fear though, that I will get discouraged and stop putting myself out there. Why? Well, because I have done that before. I might get sidetracked, and yes I have been there too. It reminded me of a favorite bible character that I have.
You see, he took his family out of the place that they had been living. That place was Ur. The story says that they were traveling to Canaan but they stopped at Haran and settled there. No friends, this is not about Abraham, but of his father Terah.
Why did the tweet lead me to this man? Well I will tell you. I know I am taking a little license, but it seems to make sense to me. I imagine that God may have told Terah to go to Canaan. Maybe this whole story of God calling out a people was going to start, not with Abraham, but with his father? Maybe, for whatever reason, he stopped in Haran and never got to the place where God had called him.
Are my assumptions true? I have no idea, but I still look to Terah as an example of what I do not want to be. He was on his way to a destination, and got sidetracked. The why’s and how’s are unknown, but what we do know is that he never got there. That is not how I want to be, but I fear that is how I will be. I see the path, but I don’t really know where I will end up. It scares me, because it means trying to be successful at something that is very subjective. Truthfully, you all may find out how really very stupid I am. Or at least, that is the fear.
Well since I am not supposed to be “fearing” anything, per my pastor last week, I guess I will stick to the path. Truthfully, I really don’t want to miss out on what may be at the end of the journey. I really don’t want to be Terah. I want to make it to the place where God calls me. Like the quote that started all of this, I don’t want to get stuck somewhere I should only be passing through.
So I have a question this morning. Do you have idols? It was something that I was
alliteration there. We had the Good Samaritan as a story and were emphasizing to the kids that Jesus wants us to love everybody. Our verse to remember today? Love one another, John 13:34. In this day and age of isolationism and categorizing each other, it was fun to use the simple illustration of the Good Samaritan loving another person. Not one of his own kind, not a friend, but just another human being.
I was praying, because I knew I would need help writing for a couple of hours today. I totally have ADHD and while writing is the way that I believe I am supposed to communicate, it is still really hard for me to do it. I get distracted so quickly and easily. Anyway, back to my conversation coming home. I had gone for a walk to the bank, and knew I wanted to write when I got home, but I wasn’t sure what I would write about. Then my mind started to wander back to my lovely surroundings, and the quick trip I took to the mountains with my hubby. 
I have a new office. Well, it is actually one of the same old bedrooms in our house, but we have given it a major overhaul. It has been cleaned and painted from top to bottom, adorned with a new desk, rug and drapes. The things that were in this room are coming back in one at a time. With each item, I am taking the time to see if I truly need it or not. This room had previously housed our computer, desk and other “office” stuff. It had also become a catch all for everything else. When that happened, it became a room that I did not like. There were things in the room that did not belong, and other things that needed to be addressed, but could be ignored because they were hidden in the chaos.
Balance has been on my mind. Some of it has to do with the political news, some with my life, but I decided to write about it because of a news story about the Wallenda family.
hurt, and thankfully all will recover. As soon as this horrific event happened, they immediately started looking for a cause. The most likely culprit was the rigging, and it was the first thing they checked, but they discovered it wasn’t the rigging. They determined that it was the most simple, yet most important thing in an aerial act. Balance.
I have been sick for the past two weeks, and have found it hard to sit and write for extended periods of time. So for some reason, this previous blog post popped into my head, and I decided to share it today. I am hoping the coughing ends soon, but I think this blog post helps me remember who God wants me to be in these very noisy days.
So to make a long story short, I have a bit of a new purpose statement for this new year. It really kind of came to me a little before Christmas, and it seemed to make an impression for multiple reasons. I actually could not get away from it because it is a bible verse that is part of the traditional Christmas story. Wow…this short story seems to be getting longer by the minute!
Why? Well maybe it was a reaction to this whole year of anger, fear, with so much talking and not enough loving. In this past year of election noise, I wondered if that proclamation of “good news” was clearly heard? Did I see “great joy” when I looked in the mirror? Or in the church pews? And were “all people” able to hear and see those things? We may have thought so, but in watching and listening, I really wasn’t so sure?
So today is January 4th and an old blog post showed up from 2014 on my FB feed. You know, one of those things they bring up every once in a while that you can share? I never get my old posts coming up like that, so I decided to read it and see what my thoughts were back then. As I opened and read the post, I knew it was what I was supposed to read this morning.
Cheryl Mendoza 