Busyness is not a virtue. It’s not a virtue, and, yet, I find myself wearing it like a badge of honor.  I want to let you know that I, too, am busy. I say it because I think it communicates my importance: I’m the type of person who is needed. I’m the kind of parent who is involved deeply with my kids. Busyness lets me justify myself. It helps me to feel valued.

It’s rare when I’m driving to choose anything other than the fastest possible route. This way can save me two minutes? I better take it. I’m looking for speed and efficiency when I travel. I default to thinking it’s the destination, not the journey that matters.

I find myself approaching the life of faith in the same way. I’m looking for the fastest and most efficient route to my spiritual destination, but it often seems that God has other plans. He seems as concerned about the route I take as where I end up. The journey, it turns out, is preparing me for the destination.

How can I have confidence that God loves me? In Exodus 4, God declares, “Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son.” In the NT, this sonship imagery is picked up to describe what it means to be redeemed by Christ. The question this has raised for me is that if I have been redeemed to be a son of God, why do I seem to prefer to live in slavery? Why do I want to stay in Egypt when I’ve been offered life in the promised land? The answer I’ve been mulling over is that I prefer slavery to sonship because my vision for the Christian life is just too small.

The great seventeenth-century English theologian John Owen warned about the danger to our neighbors when we merely play at our faith.

In pastoring and church planting, I’ve found myself trying to quantify gospel ministry. I want to make the spiritual more tangible. But I think there’s a more sinful motive at work: I want to count because it seems that if I can count it then I can control it. In Psalm 20:7, David points us to a better way.

On the fifth anniversary of my dad’s death, I’m sharing a poem I wrote last year reflecting on the last months our family got to share with him on earth.