Living our destiny in the everyday is like driving a two lane highway. If we keep to our side of the road, drivers in the opposite lane will probably never know us personally, yet we’re a blessing to them in the brief moment we pass them by, simply because we’ve kept in our lane. There’s no feeling of inspiration to it, yet it’s more important than we’ll ever realize.

“…aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands…” 1 Thessalonians 4:11

The first verse of this chapter says, “you ought to walk and to please God”—that’s walk; not run, dance, or leap. Yes, there’s a place for running and dancing and leaping—but walking is important in the everyday.

A feeling of inspiration can be good or bad—it depends entirely on whether we’re looking for it, or, if we simply meet up with it by doing our best in the everyday.

“Selah”

“When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right.” C.S. Lewis

©Cami Tapley.

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I Thessalonians 5:23,24

Think of humility in terms of renovating a house—a lot has to be stripped away to make it better. The process is ugly at a point, as everything is dirty, broken down, and chaotic. To stop at that point is a shame; it prevents the new from coming in.

Pride (self-defense) turns a blind eye and says, “Mess? What mess?” And nothing gets done. Strangely, the more wrong we are, the more unwilling we are to be set right. Humility makes us free—free to accept God’s help, and the changes that must happen to make the best things real in us.

“Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.” —Blaise Pascal

“Do not reprove a scoffer lest he hate you, reprove a wise man and he will love you.” Proverbs 9:8

There are many things to be enjoyed in life, with or without acknowledging the Creator of it. However, think of two children….Two children are given an interesting toy—one knows who gave it, the other doesn’t. What happens when the children become unhappy or bored with the toy—and count on it, it’s going to happen—the child who knows the giver has more than just a toy, that child has relationship.

“Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.” —Blaise Pascal

“…the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given—nay, cannot even be imagined as given—in our present mode of spatiotemporal experience. This desire was, in the soul, as the Siege Perilous in Arthur’s castle, the chair in which only one could sit. And if nature makes nothing in vain, the One who sits in the chair must exist.” —From The Pilgrim’s Regress, by C.S. Lewis