A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

I have a routine of sorts, a commitment that I have made to myself and a promise to the Creator God.

I won’t eat each day until I have spent time in the Word and time in prayer. My standard is to spend as much time feeding on the Word and in conversation with God as I might spend at the table feeding my physical body.

My prayer time is spent walking. If I were more time conscious I’d walk faster or even run and pray to get more out of my time/effort. I used to do it that way. Not any more. Now I just walk, saunter, trod, mosey along because my intent is to pray, think, listen, and pray. To exercise my spiritual self, not my physical self. My prayer walk is not particularly pleasant to the senses. There are lots of houses on one side, busy roads on the other, parking lots and even a large factory and some office buildings. There is one stretch that is especially unpleasant when I look down, so I don’t, remembering that the reason I am out on the walk is to look up. Sometimes, I also push Mia along. Perhaps some day she’ll ask me what I am doing, and I will tell her. (more…)

I’m having one of those rare weekends alone. My daughter is making new friends at a camp for happy teenagers, while my husband and son are scout camping at a black sand beach in Northern California. I enjoy these moments almost too much, burrowing into my home and tuning out the world with loud music and escapist fiction.

Email is one channel that breaks through my isolation. After following the stories on Sarah Palin, John McCain’s VP candidate, I was intrigued by a forwarded email: “25 things you might not know about McCain.” Written by the Associated Press, it was published in multiple news outlets August 28ff, 2008. Most of the insights are silly trivia, but one line grabbed me: “10. He talks to fellow prisoners of war, those with whom he shared a cell in Vietnam, almost daily.”

I like to stay in touch with friends and family, but the number of people I deliberately interact with daily is quite small. What would make a man chat with his cellmates at this frequency, so many years after they were all released? I found some clues in McCain’s 1973 description of the POW years and in this interview of McCain’s cellmate, George “Bud” Day. (more…)

As I read Lewis’ blog on putting on the Armor of God, he said something like, “children are given little, if any, say in what they wear.” That reminded me. . .

When my kids were young, a friend told me that one of the hardest things for kids to learn was how to make choices. Everyone faces choices, and in our culture, the choices are myriad. (Another acquaintance from a Soviet bloc country hated shopping in the States because he felt paralyzed with indecision over the selection of dozens of cereals, t-shirts, watches, and so on.) I resolved to train my kids from their earliest moments to make choices. For example, when D was an infant, I’d hold up two outfits and ask her to make a choice. When she appeared to point to an outfit, I would use that outfit and praise her for making a choice.

In life, I think a lot of our choices (from God’s perspective) are similarly inconsequential. Why would he want to control which outfit, job, or road we take, as long as our eyes are fixed on him and our desire is to serve him?

If we sense that God is nudging or calling us in a certain direction, by all means we should go that way. And of course we should continue in prayer about everything.

But when it’s time to make a decision, make one!