For a New Year and a lifetime...

I have begun this post a dozen times, deleted and restarted with the hopes of putting together a coherent thought...or two. But alas, since the new year began this little bundle inside of me has been demanding my strength, energy and even my ability to think. I'll keep trying though.

More than anything else, the Lord is teaching me the spiritual discipline of meditating. Pondering, praying, seeking, listening, wrestling, enjoying, sitting. Conviction is piercing more deeply and the magnitude of grace in my life is penetrating as I am taking time to stop and think. Rather than respond or move on, I meditate. It helps that I can only handle one thought at a time these days so in it, I'm trying to listen more and let truth sink in.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. ~Deuteronomy 6:5-8

As we pray this passage for our family and use it as vision for the training of our children, I've been struck over and over again by my own need to have His Word written on my heart and on the forefront of my mind in everything I do, even in what appears the most mundane of tasks (like folding diapers again and again.)

I come back to a sweet quote from Jonathon Edwards about his wife Sarah's spiritual life in the midst of caring for their family:

"Oh how good, said the person once, is it to work for God in the day-time, and at night to lie down under his smiles! High experiences and religious affections in this person have not been attended with any disposition at all to neglect the necessary business of a secular calling...but worldly business has been attended with great alacrity, as part of the service of God: the person declaring that, it being done thus, it was found to be as good as prayer."

So as I begin a new year, with two little ones at my feet and the anticipation of another wee one to join us, my resolution for today, this year (and this lifetime) is to continue to let His Word sink richly, deeply into my heart so that it is not merely written, but etched into my soul and on the tip of my tongue and forefront of all I do. Such that the folding of laundry and the washing of dishes are found to be as good as prayer and that those moments of attending to "worldly business" are still moments where the Gospel is spoken of and God glorified.

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

Soli Deo Gloria