A Letter to My Way Younger Self by Bob Jones

The February prompt is to write a letter to your younger self. What advice would you give?


Dear Bob:

Congratulations on landing your first assignment in pastoral ministry. You've been given a sacred opportunity. Your new role as an assistant pastor will demand more of you than anything else in life. This role is way more than a job; it is a calling.

You will put in long hours, sometimes seven days a week. At the beginning you won't know what you're doing but that's OK. You'll feel that way for every new major challenge that God calls you into. Bible College trained you to parse Bible verses but not to deal with the complexity of human interaction. You will run programs not people.

No matter what happens, people are never the problem. The problem isn’t even the problem. How you look at the problem is the problem.

Don't sweat the small stuff. It's all small stuff.

The most important person in your life is your wife, Jocelyn. She will be with you day in day out for decades. In due time you'll leave your first congregation and enter into a new ministry opportunity and Jocelyn will be there with you for that. She is the only person you'll carry forward, aside from your firstborn son.

Pay attention to Jocelyn. She is God's best gift to you. She is smart. She is good.

She wants you to succeed and she will do everything she can to help you achieve that.

Listen to her. She has insight about people that you don't have. Trust her judgment. She is intuitive.

She loves you. Put her first. Make time for her. Quantity and quality time. Do your best to understand her. Live at peace with her.

Have fun with her.

Together, you will walk through the deaths of your parents, and life-threatening illnesses, and travel to dangerous places. Hold hands all the way and hold each other tight.

You will be privileged to journey with stellar leaders through plans and projects to the glory of God. Your labour will endure. You will see a harvest of souls from the seeds you will sow.

You will walk many congregants and community members through death, devastating trauma, and grief. Those experiences will be God’s training to prepare you for your own personal losses.

Your lifetime will pass by seemingly at the speed of light. Just as the scriptures advise us, “our days are but a handbreadth.” Live in the moment. Treasure every day. Start with Bible reading, prayer, journaling, and coffee. Always coffee.

Your collection of the front pages of newspapers from Canada and around the world will end up in the garbage. The books you purchased for your study will be given away to younger leaders and a Bible college library. The Coca-Cola bottle and can collection that will eventually define your office space will end up on other people’s shelves. But the relationships you develop, the leaders you call up and invest in, and the people that you share Jesus with will last eternally.

Settle your priorities early.

You can't put God in the centre of your church or your marriage or your role. But you can put God in the centre of your life and that choice will affect everything else.

All work and no play will make Bob a dull boy.

So, listen to Jocelyn, take time off, relax, and make use of all your holidays every year. The church will survive without you. Put your hand into a bucket of water and then draw it out and the hole that remains defines how indispensable you are.

God is for you. No matter how dire the circumstances, or how much you doubt yourself, God is for you. Walk in that truth. It will sustain you, give you grit, and keep your heart and mind quiet and at rest as you trust Jesus.

God bless you, Bob.

Your friend,
Bob

 

I had a lot of fun writing this. That's what writing should be all about. Thank you for the prompt.

I'm grateful for the life and wife and family and friends and opportunities God has given me.

How about you?

Seasons by Lorilee Guenter

 

Winter, spring, summer, fall. 

Which is your favourite season? I do not have an answer to that question. Each season has its draws and its drawbacks. But how can you like {season}? The chosen season to hate on is usually winter with its bone-chilling cold.

I like the crisp, clear days where the air sparkles with tiny, suspended drops of moisture. I enjoy brewing a mug of tea or hot chocolate, grabbing a blanket, and experiencing the quiet that cold seems to produce. I recognise the period of dormancy nature undergoes during winter. In time, unseen life will make its presence known.

I enjoy spring where each day brings something new as the white turns to muddy brown, then one by one plants push through until the whole palette is visible. Just as an artist places one brush stroke and then another, God wakes up the plants in order.

Summer shines with its long days of abundance. Some days it seems like you can see the plants grow as they stretch and bloom. I wander through my yard almost daily and delight in the changes.

Autumn brings crumbly leaves that I must step on to hear the satisfying crunch.  Trees take on vibrant hues as the flowers fade. A new coolness brings a reprieve from the heat. Vegetable soups simmer in place of summer salads.

While I have learned to enjoy all of the seasons, the lessons learned have not transferred to my writing life. Seasons of dormancy frustrate me. Intellectually I know this is a time of pondering. The ideas simmer beneath the surface waiting for the appropriate time to sprout. The seasons of abundance leave me scrambling as I try to bring my thoughts into order. I find myself longing for a slower pace. How quickly the frustration of the drought disappears. 

During summer, my writing slows. I am pulled outside by many activities. This year, I am trying to embrace the change. I trust the experiences will give rise to a new season of wordplay. It always does. And why wouldn't it? God has always been faithful not matter the season. He won't change now.

This summer I am attempting to embrace the season of rest in my creative life. I am choosing to let God refresh my soul. The writing continues at a slow pace. In between, I savour the tart juice of a raspberry just plucked from a plant. I pause to listen to the birdsong. I smile in gratitude at God's creation. Come fall I expect to pick up my pen with more frequency as God stirs the well of ideas and breathes life into new works. It is His way, for me at least.

I would like to look at my creative seasons as I do the created seasons. Each has a purpose. Each year I am able to reflect a little more and in doing so, I recognise God's hand in each moment. They are gifts from Him. In His hands, I flourish in a healthy, sustainable way.

Lorilee Guenter lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She likes to experiment with plants, paint and words. Curiosity and creativity lead to many unexpected endeavors.

V is for Vanity by Susan Barclay

 

God gives each of us gifts to use for His glory. How often, though, these gifts can become a snare as we take pride in our abilities, forgetting the Giver and His intent. We can even turn our gifts into idols, as objects of worship and worth. Forgive us, LORD!

Seeking wealth through our art is vanity. The writer of Ecclesiastes 5 writes, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income” (v. 10), and the Apostle Paul tells us in Philippians 4, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (v. 12b). Oh, that we would all cease striving for millionaire status and learn to be content with what we have! The secret Paul refers to is the experience of relationship with Holy Spirit, Christ’s indwelling. Really, who could ask for anything more?

Seeking fame is also vanity. Jesus reminds us in Matthew 20 that God’s definition of greatness differs from ours. “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (vv. 26b-28). Our gifts aren’t meant to make us great; they’re meant to be used in His service. As writers, people who know how to use words well, the questions in the back of our minds should always be, “What message does God want me to communicate to others? How can I use my writing to touch others’ lives with the love of Christ? How can I use my words to bless others and build them up?” We all know that words matter, that life and death are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21), or in our case the pen, computer or typewriter. Let our greatness be in service to our God and the people He has made.

We can be thankful for our gifts without becoming hungry for money or fame, which are ultimately dissatisfying. With humility, God can use our writing to glorify Himself and to expand His kingdom. Our best treasures are sent on ahead, found in Heaven, the dwelling place of our hearts (Matthew 6:21), and since this is Thanksgiving month in Canada, let us be especially grateful and content with all the blessings we enjoy in His mercy and love, including our ability to write well.

________________________

For more about Susan Barclay and her writing, please visit www.susan-barclay.blogspot.com. 

G is for Gratitude Journals by Carol Harrison

 

  

As I read through the Bible, I find so many references that command us to give thanks and not just when we feel like it or when life is going great. David in the Psalms knew what going through trials and hardships was all about and even though some of his Psalms are filled with laments, he ends with praise to God and giving thanks that God is God.

In Psalm 95:2 it says, “Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”

I have no excuse for not giving thanks to God for all he has done; for his love, mercy, and faithfulness. Circumstances in life change and some are extremely difficult. There are times I don’t feel like being grateful and yet God commands us to be thankful or grateful.

I Thessalonians 5: 16-19 “Rejoice always. Pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

David wrote out his thankfulness in Psalms, or songs of praise. Paul wrote instructions to the early church and to all believers, inspired by God, and included giving thanks or being grateful in more than one place.

So as I thought more about gratitude and thankfulness, gratitude journals came to mind. I looked up definitions of what a gratitude journal is. There were many examples of gratitude journals you could buy as well as various entries talking about what a gratitude journal is or what types of things you can write into one.

Really, gratitude journals are personal to you as a way to express your thankfulness for any and everything in your life. You can make a list, write a sentence, or even an entire journal entry. Sometimes you might want a combination of the three. Grab a notebook, a diary, or even go high-tech with an app as long as it is a place and means for you to easily keep track of things you are grateful for.

Why should we keep a gratitude journal? Being thankful and expressing our gratitude is commanded by God. Also keeping a gratitude journal is thought to boost your well-being and helps us focus on positive thoughts. The more regularly we do anything, the easier it is to become a habit, and keeping a gratitude journal is no exception. Imagine if we kept a journal every day for a year or every week for a year, how ingrained looking for things to be grateful for would become.

I must admit, that the idea of keeping a gratitude journal appeals to me and yet when I’ve tried to list things every day that I’m grateful for, I feel like I hit a wall. It isn’t that there aren’t things to be grateful for, I think I just balk at the expectation to write a certain amount of them per day. I don’t journal every day in any kind of journal. I am more sporadic at journal entries.

A couple of years ago, I made myself a junk journal whose purpose was to be a receptacle for the positive, the things to be grateful for, and the verses that meant a lot to me. I didn’t set out to call it a gratitude journal and yet that is what it really is. A place to record things I am grateful for. I need to make more entries into it.

A few weeks ago, our youngest daughter, Amee, wanted a gratitude journal. We looked at some in stores and on-lone. In the end, she decided she needed a junk journal, made by mom, to be hers. The first thing she put in it were Bible verses. What a positive challenge that was for me. First to make the journal and then to realize that we have the perfect reasons to be grateful. God and His Word.

How about you? Have you ever kept a gratitude journal or do you have one now? How often do you post an entry? What way do you record your gratefulness? I know this is challenging me to pick up my junk journal and make more entries of things I am grateful for.

Psalm 100

Shout for joy to the lord, all the earth, Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues though all generations.

 

Carol Harrison writes and creates junk journals from her home in Saskatoon. She is passionate about helping people of all ages and abilities find their voice and reach their full potential and encouraging them to find glimmers of hope and glimpses of joy in all circumstances.

 

 

9 Notable Gratitude Writing Prompts by Bob Jones

Over thirty years ago, motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, challenged me to be a good finder. To become the kind of person who consistently looks for the good in situations and people. It’s easy to see the bad and act like a critic. You have to look a little longer and dig a little deeper to find the good.

 

Mr. Franklin Holmes was a volunteer chaplain working in prisons in Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. He taught a program in those prisons about the importance of looking for the good in every situation. Those men and women took his prompt seriously. They came up with over thirty things they were grateful for about the place where they were incarcerated.

 

Sometimes find good just takes is a little prompting. Notice things you like to do, the people you get to do life with, and the opportunities life presents. Some of the observed good will not only be inspiring but useful as subjects for articles. If any of the following prompts create a path for you, I’ll be grateful.

 

NINE PROMPTS + A BONUS

 

ONE / Write about an act of kindness from another person.

This could be an act of kindness from a good neighbour, friend, co-worker, family member, or even a total stranger. This might be a small thing. Sometimes small things at the right time make the biggest difference.

 

TWO / Write about something that brightens your day when you’re feeling down.

Is there something that lights you up on a bad day? Describe it and write about why or how it makes you feel better.

 

THREE / Describe your favorite time of the day.

What is it and why is it your favorite time? When we focus on small moments, we recognize the importance of each day. Think about the day you are having now. What is special to you?

 

FOUR / List 4 things you are grateful for today.

It doesn’t matter if these are small things. List them. I had a simple, daily gratitude habit. Every morning I arrived on campus at the church I served for 29 years, I thanked God for the opportunity. This prompt started me on a positive note every day.

 

FIVE / Describe your favourite person and list all of that person’s good qualities.

Who is the person? Write about one or more of those qualities.This prompt pushes you to not take people for granted and to appreciate those around you.

 

SIX / Recall a success you had. Write a one paragraph thank you speech describing who helped you achieve the success. 

Identify one person who helped you reach that goal.  What did they do and how did their action contribute to your success? After writing your speech, share it with the person who helped you succeed.

 

SEVEN / Write about your favourite hobby.

What is your hobby? What about it makes it good? How does your hobby make you feel?

 

EIGHT / Write about something you did to make someone happy today.

See the good in what you did today. Describe how what you did made the other person feel. Be thankful that you could reach out and make someone else feel joy.

 

NINE / Write about something good you saw in your church or how your church is a blessing to your community.

Are there volunteers who stand out for their faithfulness and second mile kind of attitude? Is there a program that helps people? Write about the impact it has on you. 

 

BONUS / Write about a pet and what makes or perhaps made the pet special.

The pet could be yours or another person’s. Maybe it’s a pet you see a few times a year on special family occasions. What makes that pet special? How does the pet make you feel?

Are you grateful for writing prompts? Do you have a favourite source for prompts?

 

Thank you for reading.

 

Follow Bob’s writing at REVwords.