Thinking About What I've Been Thinking About

The students are on Spring Break, and that means that we're t-minus six weeks or so until the school year is over. Which means that I'm starting to evaluate the year, my first one back at my alma-matter. And to be honest, I've been sorely tempted towards pride. Given all the transition and challenges that I knew about coming into the year and other challenges that no one could foresee, it couldn't have turned out much better.

Over the weekend I confessed my dark secret to my wife Kelly while traveling. "I know," she said, "I've been praying for you." So much for my secrets.

I've struggled to get consistent time with the Lord since our son was born two years ago. My latest trick (i.e. this week) is to open up to a random Psalm and read it while getting Davis breakfast.

Yesterday I opened up to this: "I will meditate on your majesty." I don't remember which Psalm it was, but I do know this: I have been spending much more time recently meditating on my own (delusions of) majesty than on God's (actual) majesty.

This whole God-worship thing is powerful medicine for me, and for billions who have gone before me and found the Psalms to be a healing ointment for the ache of pride and self-centeredness. When I consider the majesty of God and I'm captivated by the wonder and glory of that more than by the works of my own hands, then my world is reset, the universe of my life is re-oriented around the proper center.

I am then freed up to view my work, my gifts in their proper place: I've done some good things this year, I've made some mistakes, I've put these gifts to good use for the most part. But it's all from God, in God, through God, and back to God. He is the one majestic one. I am delighted to have my life and story and destiny and yes, even my work, all bound up and caught up in Him, or else it's all pointless--full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.