If I ever do write a book, I imagine it will not be the great American novel I hoped for or even a novel at all... probably more of a Blue Like Jazz type of autobiographical meandering, musings on topics far and wide that always come back to God. I don't know if I have anything inside me quite to the level of Donald Miller's reflections, but I think his format is the closest to how my heart works.
Because I am all about the meandering. I've written here before about loving to get lost and my need for meandering before. I even used that word, meander. (Revisit that post here.)
So here's my meandering for today...
I went to Parkway for Sunday school class and second service today with Rachel, ended up at lunch with my brother- and sister-in-law by accident (at least to us), then wandered around Barnes and Noble with Rachel continuing the thinking and talking, looking for books, looking for meaning, and then I went on my own to Walmart and then to every store with dollar in the name between Walmart and my house (There are three.) looking for some inexpensive paperback copies of the Bible. I ended up finding some, finally, where else but Goodwill, where, as I stood at the checkout with four copies of the Bible in my hand, I saw one of my students from Shafer and spoke to her and her grandmother. Then I left Goodwill, full of wondering, wondering if God had a reason to time our meeting there, wondering if she saw all the Bibles in my hand (None looked much like Bibles from the spines.), wondering if there was something more I should have said than what I did, wondering what, if anything, seeing this sweet girl "by chance" in the Hendersonville Goodwill has to do with my continuing questions about whether or not I should be devoting my days and energy endlessly to teaching...
I am so grateful that I do not have to go to work tomorrow because it allowed for a day of wandering and wondering, a day of lengthy conversations and soul-baring, a day of walking around with my eyes, heart, and hands open, looking for whatever God might put in my path that could point me toward His answers for all the current questions of this life. The answers are coming-- I feel them rumbling-- in friendships growing deeper, in lives overlapping a little more all the time. About 13 months ago, I wandered through the same Barnes and Noble and left with a copy of Revise Us Again by Frank Viola, not knowing if Jason would ever even crack the cover, much less how much it would be an instrument of igniting so much change in our lives, at least in our thoughts and conversations; the actual, tangible changes to our lives are still coming, but coming, nonetheless, I'm certain, and who knows what treasures God has stored up in the books that left in my hands today or in the pages of the musty Bibles I brought home tonight. Who knows but Him the answer to this "To teach or not to teach" conundrum plaguing my mind, but I have faith tonight in those answers and rejoice in the friendships and relationships He is so faithfully building.
And, now, in search of the Word of God in a way much more complete than my search for Bibles this evening... my search for the living Word, Christ.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
-John 1:1
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