"… make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands." - First Thessalonians 4:11

"If you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet, they're about to announce the lottery numbers!" - Homer Simpson

Read Genesis 22:1-19 / Jehovah Jireh ... “the God whose provision will be seen”. How is God providing for you and how are you partnering with God in this provision?

It's a pretty fine line really ... the line between depending on God and depending on myself. Time on my knees in prayer and time on my feet being industrious. Keeping the focus on my relationship with a God I can't actually see and keeping my eyes on what's right in front of me so I don't trip and look like a doofus.

I'll be the first to admit how challenging it can be to remain keenly aware of the Kingdom of God, while living in (and sometimes feeling like I'm being held hostage by) the kingdom of this world. And yet, to settle for anything less is to remain unengaged by who God is and what God is doing -- and it's to ignore the potent reality that God is, in moment-by-moment ways, inviting us to parter with Him in what He's up to ... both in our own lives and in the world swirling all around us.

My God, do you see the immensity of this invitation? It's absolutely central, pivotal, axial and critical to us living into the reality of everything else in our lives. When we refuse to become and remain intentionally partnered with God in the day-to-day stuff of life, we will always remain isolated, disconnected and unfocused. And who wants that? I mean we settle for it. But who wants it?

And so may we be blown away by God's offer of joining Him in this Holy-Unlimited-Partnership. May we be drawn into the beauty of God's immediate and tender Presence. And may we know, really know, that we are the "beloved", and that without God as our center and passion, nothing else will make much sense. Godspeed.

read.think.pray.live.

Gregg