abundant life

Slow Walking

Slow Walking

I don’t know about you, but walking slowly kills me. Whether it be the zoo, the mall or the museum, there is lots of walking slowly while looking at things. I can walk quickly or run, but the slow walking makes me hurt in ways I never expect. Sometimes I feel like that’s how so much of life is—slow-walking through another problem, another dilemma, another decision. We can’t run through whatever it is, but have to maintain a slow, even pace.

I want the big moves! The big changes! The times when everything flips and you are dealing with a brand new thing. But often, we are called to the slow, steady pursuit of what God has put in front of us.

The beautiful news about this is that God has not abandoned us to do it alone. He never said we were supposed to be able to fulfill all the promises of God by ourselves, or that we should do all the good because we’ve generated enough willpower to make it through. Instead, He promises to be the power within us to walk the slow walk when it’s called for, to keep holding on when everything in us wants to quit or run.

God's Blessing

God's Blessing

A friend of mine gave me the Passion translation of Genesis that just was released, and I was struck immediately in the introduction by something that was said about blessing. Genesis is full of talk of God’s blessing, and yet I realized I had a bad definition of blessing. I had always thought of it as the “good stuff” like riches, power, freedom, etc. You know, sort of like the opposite of a curse.