Back to school

The kids are not the only ones going back to school. I've picked up the pace on studies again, flipping through notes from winter and spring, reading original journals of missionaries and early Pentecostals, while grinding through edits and revisions along the way.

If our brains need stimulation to keep growing and strong, it pays to keep learning and trying new things. Hope the studies don't make me lose my mind instead!

Our bodies get bored, too. I'm about ready to get off this chair to take the dog for a walk.

How about our spirits? I listened to a reading of Genesis 10-15, the journey from Babel to Abraham in Canaan, awaiting a promised son.

Abraham's father was also on the way to Canaan, but stopped in Haran. Had God called him, too? Only after his father died did Abraham move westward toward the promised country. Even then, Abraham knew so little about God. Scripture was not yet written, God made personal appearances, and sacrifices were the norm. Abraham trusted and obeyed (faith), but he also attempted to "help" God to realize the promises, with disastrous, long-lived consequences.

My morning's meditation was "The God who Knows." I sat enthralled, considering our God who is never confused, surprised, or out of options. Then a phrase from previous meditations began to insert itself: "The Beloved God."

Finally, my heart came to rest on "The Beloved God who Knows." Ah, who else has a God like this? He knows us. Carries us in our weaknesses. Loves us. Wants us to love him in return. Embraces us with care and benevolence.

May our bodies, souls. and spirits be devoted to loving him today with the obedience of wholehearted trust.

What's your back-to-school "aha" today? Are there impossibilities that God wants to answer in a miraculous way?

• Letting a little one go for that first day of school
• Believing that healing is on its way
• Trusting that financial challenges will be met
• Provision for that difficult relationship
• Meeting the needs of a troubled family, friendship group, or congregation
• Or?

Read more:

*But Moses protested again, "What if they won't believe me or listen to me? What if they say, 'The Lord never appeared to you'?"

Then the LORD asked him, '"What is that in your hand?"

"A shepherd's staff," Moses replied.

"Throw it down on the ground," the LORD told him. So Moses threw down the staff, and it turned into a snake! Moses jumped back.

Then the LORD told him, "Reach out and grab its tail." So Moses reached out and grabbed it, and it turned back into a shepherd's staff in his hand. Exodus 4:1–4 NLT

*Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you. Jeremiah 32:28 NIV 

*But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10 NIV