On the journey

The Journey is the daily devotional published by the Bible Reading Fellowship. Their current issue contains the first round of daily commentaries I wrote on the Gospel of Mark. It was an assignment they gave me two years ago. Additional entries will follow throughout the year. My copies arrived a few days after the year began. So this morning I caught up reading the first week’s worth of commentaries.

And I had another of those experiences where something I had written before the stroke came back to shout in my face.

Each day ends with questions to reflect on and discuss. Then there is a short prayer. The entry I wrote for last Friday now had me in tears.

R&D: Are you able to follow Jesus even if he won’t answer your questions and explain his plan up front?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, I don’t know all that you are inviting me to do with my life. How could I? But please help me to get the answer right when you call me to follow you today.

When I recovered my voice (what is left of it) I moved on to read today’s entry. And lost it again.

R&D: Is it all right for us to have our own list of things we ask Jesus to do for us? Do you also take time to listen and find out what Jesus himself wants to do, too?

Prayer: Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your love and provision for me today. Thank you for giving me my daily bread. And, since this is the day you have made and I want to rejoice in it, what is it that you want me to do today that will show my love for you?

Melanie and I just stared at each other, silently. Then she said, “It’s the same thing that happened to me when I reread my book, Listening In Our Circumstances.”

Our circumstance, our world now, is completely changed from what it was when we were writing just two years ago. It is unnerving to read our own words of counsel as they break over our heads and shoulders now. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to talk back at the authors in the moment!

I can’t remember anyone warning us about this aspect of putting your writing out there for everybody to see the next day, including ourselves. It can look so different, even if it still rings true.

You other writers: be warned.

I had gotten this far in this blog when Melanie called me to get some exercise walking around the house. Today is a day between visits to the rehab gym. It is also one of Florida’s chilly, winter days. (I don’t want to squander any reader sympathy so I won’t say what the temperature is.) I pulled on my jacket and we headed out the door.

The sidewalk across the front of the house tilts very slightly down since there is a lake at the end of the street. I had never noticed this tilt before. It was never an issue before. It never took as much concentration to keep my balance as it does now. My circumstance has changed.

Sitting at my computer again I thought about that. I never used to pay much attention to how other people were coping with their changes before. That has changed. Things look different to me now.

Lord Jesus, I don’t know all that you are inviting me to do with my life. How could I? But please help me to get the answer right when you call me to follow you today.