Education Blog

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28–30

I love the phrase “the unforced rhythms of grace.”

Grace is something you don’t expect. It’s unmerited.

But when God gets involved, grace has a rhythm. It has a beat. We can learn it when we walk with Jesus.

The moments when I’m most frustrated with my daughter — and least likely to show her grace — come when I myself am not well rested. I have a schedule, a plan for how things are supposed to go — how I expect them to happen.

Life during the pandemic doesn’t quite work out that way.

It’s why everyone is so zealous to get back to normal. We want to find a rhythm that we can a follow, a beat that we can keep time with.

Continue reading “Dancing to the Beat of Grace”

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4

The Psalmist is not promising that if we delight in God, we will get a million dollars. He’s telling us that if we truly delighted in the Lord — if we saw him as the infinitely valuable lover of our souls that He is — we would want nothing more than more of Him.

At dinner tonight, my daughter extolled the virtues of nachos. “Chips, cheese, and beans,” she declared. “They are so delicious.”

Indeed.

Continue reading “Delighting In Small (And Large) Things”

“There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” Deuteronomy 1:31

My daughter is barely three feet tall. There’s no way for her to physically carry me.

That’s a good to remember when I’m tired.

There’s no situation where she can carry me, and I have yet to be in a situation where I couldn’t carry her.

This fact has made me consider God’s love for me in a new way.

There’s no situation I could be in where it would be my duty or responsibility to carry God. Likewise — and this is true in an absolute way for God in a way it’s not for me as an earthly father — there is no situation I could be in where God is not able to carry me through it.

My daughter is in quarantine right now, and we are with her: negotiating time for work with the time and attention she needs.

Yesterday it hit me.

Continue reading “Intentional Time”

“When I am afraid, I put my trust in You.” Psalm 56:3

I memorized Psalm 56:3 when I was in kindergarten, but in my wildest dreams, I had never contemplated something like COVID-19 (or “the germs” as we refer to COVID when we’re talking with our daughter).

My list of fears included bread crust, snakes, and having to rake leaves.

My daughter is living in a different world, and her list of fears on any given day is long enough to fill thirty-seven books.

She’s scared of the dark, steep hills, daddy long legs, and her cousins’ dogs, just to name a few of her phobias. What, I wondered, would her reaction be if she actually encountered something worth fearing?

Well, Saturday was that time. She had been exposed to COVID-19 at her daycare earlier in the week, and it was time to see if she was carrying the virus or not.

My wife tried to explain what the test would involve: a quick sweep of her nose. My daughter’s questions were endless, and with every answer we provided, we seemingly caused her more anxiety.

Still, she was resilient. She developed some pretty great coping methods for an event I knew she was dreading.

Continue reading “Unicorns and Rainbows”

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” I Corinthians 10:31

Paul’s verse is a humdinger because it means that the two things I do every day — the two things my daughter has been doing since she was born — are ways of giving God glory. Not a day goes by where we don’t eat and drink something.

I love donuts. I love coffee. My daughter loves donuts too. She loves milk.

When we enjoy those gifts — and acknowledge that they are gifts from God — we glorify Him.

Sadly, I don’t do this all the time.

Every evening at dinner time, our daughter gives thanks for the meal.

For awhile, she sang, “God, our Father…” Then she moved to a remix of a mealtime classic: “God is good. / God is great. / Let us thank Him / for what’s on this plate!” Now she’s settled on the classic version: “God is great. / God is good. / Let us thank Him / for our food. Amen!”

If I were to rate on average the way her tone of voice matches her prayer, I would give a 4.2 out of 10. She’s saying “thank you” with her lips, but she sounds like she’s saying, “this again?”

Continue reading “Intentional Gratitude (For Donuts)”

“At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well.” Exodus 12:29

“Why did God kill all those people?”

This was the question my daughter asked last night after hearing about the last plague in Exodus 12.

But that wasn’t her only question.

“Will God kill me if I disobey?”

Even tougher.

And finally: “Why did God kill all those people and not just Pharaoh’s son?”

Each weeknight, my wife reads our daughter a Bible story before she takes a bath. The book they’re reading was my wife’s when she was a kid, and it goes through the Bible in order. Last night, they completed the story of the ten plagues.

Continue reading “Tough Questions. Tougher Answers.”

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.” Numbers 6:24–26

I’ve said these words from Numbers over a church congregation, but I’ve never intentionally said them over my daughter.

They are words of blessing and peace, but I often think of them as something to be said in a church service, not in the course of everyday life.

Today, my daughter and I spent some quality time together as she practiced riding her bike down our country back road. She was scared of falling, so I spent the first part of the ride giving her pep talks.

“You can do it!”

“Keep pedaling!”

It was going to be a long ride for her and me if I had to keep that up the entire time.

So I turned to something I know she loves: music.

Continue reading “The Blessing”