a promise before departing

This week, I head off the grid for a bit. So, today's note reflects that reality. It is brief, but hopefully helpful for you today.  

What I want to say today is very simple: our habits form us. If we have a habit of rest, that helps us stay balanced and quiet and clear eyed. 

If we have a habit of taking in beauty and content that stimulates our thinking towards God and others, we will be able to handle a great deal more than if we simply tried to engage with life out of our own strength. 

These habits for me are attached to a reality that is etched in the slate of each and every person reading this post today and here it is, in the words (paraphrased) of my friend James Bryan Smith:

You are one in whom Christ dwells and delights. With him you can do anything, without him you can do nothing. In Him you are significant, safe, and strong. 

When we face a divided, dumpster fire political spectrum, we lean back on that promise. We embrace everything that is our current angry, divided, non-conversational-choose-your-side public discourse and say "I am one in whom Christ dwells and delights. Therefore..."

When we are in interpersonal crisis, wearing thin at arguments and passive-aggressive asides, we can say, "Christ dwells and delights in me. Therefore..."

As you engage in habits of prayer, silence, reading, service, and contemplation keep this promise at hand. Jesus invites you to dwell with him and he with you (John 15:5); an inter-participatory (thanks to Richard Foster for that term) life with God-in-skin so that we may become God-in-skin where we are. 

May your road be filled with beauty this week. May you feel life in all of its holiness and horror and in the middle, celebrating with and suffering with, may you know you are never unaccompanied.

Dwells.
Delights.
Empowers. 

Choose habits today that prepare you for this kind of new reality and you will find water flowing in deserts for the first time, perhaps ever.