The Sacred Everyday No. 1: An Answered Prayer

I am excited to post my first Sacred Everyday moment. If you’re not sure exactly what I’m talking about, read this post and you’ll understand.

Today I signed on to Facebook and was greeted by this post from my son.

Jesse's BaptismPM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was staring at a full-fledged answer to prayer. I had been praying for my son for many years, and right if front of my eyes for all the world (at least Facebook world) to see was this post. Yeah! God is good. And I hadn’t even been bugging Jesse about getting baptized. I was quiet and let God be God and work in his life. Galatians 6:9 flitted across my mind as I held my own little happy-dance party:

“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.” (NLT)

Sacred and Everyday thumbnailGod collided this Sacred Everyday moment right into my everyday, and I didn’t even have to look to find it!

What about you? Have you noticed a Sacred Everyday today? Please share it below, as momentous or as everyday as it may be. We never know where or when the two will intersect.

Pray on!




The Sacred Everyday

Sacred and EverydayOne of my passions is finding the sacred in the everyday, like our tagline says. While I love special holidays and holy days, I don’t want to wait just for those times to draw close to God. I want to sharpen my sense of Him every day. But it’s too easy to get caught up in the daily details of living and forget to look for Jesus right where I am.

Record God’s Fingerprints

I’ve challenged myself to record His fingerprints in my life: as many times a week as I can, I am going to post a picture and a few words about where or how I’ve seen Jesus that day. It may be through a person, a place, a thing, or an idea. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, trying to become more aware of that thin space where heaven and earth meet. I’m excited to capture what often goes unnoticed — His sacred meeting my everyday. I hope you’ll join me — and share some of yours too.

Pray on!

 

 

 

 




Sticky Handprints

stickyhandprints

When my children were little, I would often find their little sticky handprints all around the house, especially on the windows and sliding glass door in the kitchen. I could see the perfect outline of their tiny hands and noses where they had leaned in to the window pressing against it to eagerly watch snowflakes falling or a hungry bird at the feeder. Those little prints said, “I lingered here. This was important.”

Last Wednesday, Mary and I launched our first online Bible study, The Simple Life (still plenty of time for you to join us if you would like). In the first week’s lesson, author Cynthia Heald asks a question on page 16 of Becoming a Woman of Simplicity: “What do you sense the Lord is saying to you about what a life lived in single-minded devotion to Him would look like?”

To me it looks like a handprint ~ God’s handprints.

I like looking for God’s handprints in His world, particularly in the little, simple, often-overlooked things in nature. orn #2They’re there, all around us, but it takes time and intent to see His handprints in the small things. And in a typical over-scheduled day in my life, I don’t leave myself much time to slow down and savor things.

I wonder how much I’m missing.

What small gifts has God put right under my nose that I’m missing because I’m not looking for them? Instead, I have my eyes firmly fixed on my schedule, complete with my check-off-the-next-thing-on-my-list glaze in my eyes.

I love that this study makes me reevaluate what I’m doing. And one thing I want to do is to put my eyes on God so that I don’t miss His handprints that say “I lingered here. This is important.” Each one is a gift. Sometimes the gift is purely for my enjoyment, as when I bask in the radiance of a creamsicle-orange sunset. Or when I see the smooth, mahogany acorn nestled among the rocks and leaves in the woods. Other times these small gifts hold a lesson for me to discover, like the methodical persistence I see in the caterpillars I captured in the amazing video below. I almost missed that, but fortunately, God got my attention.

I want God’s sacred and my everyday to meet in a holy collision of life lived in single-minded devotion to Him. I want to see His sticky handprints wherever I go. That’s my answer.

Pray on!

photo credit: Duncan Brown (Cradlehall) via photopin cc (Changes added in PicMonkey)