Daughter asked me to set her alarm thirty minutes earlier than usual.

“Why?”

“So I can sleep in.”

“?”

“When the alarm goes off, I can shut it off and know I have 30 more minutes to sleep.”

“But wouldn’t you rather just sleep those 30 minutes without being woken up?”

“No. I like the feeling of knowing I can go back to sleep.”

Whatever it takes, I guess.

A spouse who loves me.

A daughter who delights me.

Parents who encourage me.

A family of aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, who remember me.

Work that challenges me.

Work that pays me enough to live and eat.

Friends who laugh with me.

Colleagues who inspire me.

A church that nurtures me.

God who saves me.

I’m thankful.

Maybe that scoldy little sentence we all learned as children can serve us as adults, albeit in a different way. As children, not saying anything at all when we didn’t have anything nice to say was for the benefit of our peers; Kevin and Rhonda don’t need to hear your opinion of them unless it’s complimentary. That will hurt their feelings. But Kevin and Rhonda are grown ups now–indulging your negativity about them is hurting you as much as you mean it to damage them. 

There’s no prize for the best take down. Not in real life. Forget personal attacks: even summing up the bad news of the day with clarity isn’t as useful as it feels. There is so much to feel negative about, I know. But does talking about it all the time really help?

Maybe today I’ll keep my negative opinions to myself, just to see what happens. 

A small black speck caught the corner of my eye just before I hit the first step. It was hovering in midair, and my mind registered it first as a fly. It wasn’t moving, though, so my head involuntarily turned to see it fully and, in less than a second, recognized its arachnid shape and posture dangling on the end of a silken line attached to the ceiling above. 

It hung right at head height for my daughter beside me. One more step and she would have it in her hair. My right arm shot from my side and the hand closed around the spider, as, in one fluid motion, I pivoted lift and slammed my capture open-palmed into the hallway carpet. 

My daughter looked at me annoyed. “Dad, what are you doing?” she asks with a roll of the eyes. 

I choose not to tell her that I’ve just literally saved her life. 

It comes at you while you’re building a spreadsheet or crossing items off your to do list or emptying your email inbox, this reminder of the irreducibly human drama around and under everyone we care about.

You look up from your desk and immediately doubt that these are the tasks that should occupy your attention. Can you not join a protest? Or stand beside a hospital bed?

So much of what our people endure escapes our attention. Could we take it if it didn’t?

The person next to me at our co-worker’s baby shower congratulated me on my quickness with a clever remark. The father-to-be has asked if there was something inside the tartan baby booties we’d picked up for them on our Scotland vacation last summer, noting how heavy they felt, and I’d answered, “Yes. Haggis.”

It feels good to make a room laugh. Everybody knows that. 

But you can spend valuable energy in group looking for an opening for your next quip, energy that might better be used to listen, to reflect, to connect on a level deeper than wit. 

Here’s something I used to roll my eyes at is books and discussions about church participation in America: all the people who show up when they start having kids.

Lots of sociology of religion texts described this phenomenon when I was in seminary, and I always looked down on it as a less-than kind of motivation for coming to church. I maintained a kind of Pelagian disdain for those who couldn’t be bothered with church in college and young adulthood (after spending lots of time in Sunday School and youth group) but who suddenly discovered a yearning for God and a religious community once they became parents.

That was dumb. It signified the projection of my own religious experience as the norm everyone else should follow. I was young.

People who come back around to church when the kids are born are taking a massive step. Though they often present as nominally involved and are busy with lots and lots of competing commitments, what with full-time careers and ever-growing schedules of kids’ activities, their search for meaning and connection–for God–is as authentic as the sighing pleading of the 20 year-old in the pew next to them. It feels critically important to make good use of their time and energy. Get to the heart of the matter. Don’t fool around.

James Altucher told an interviewer that he doesn’t read a newspaper because it is, in his phrase, “the first draft of history.” I remember hearing that and thinking the idea had heft; news stories change as more facts are learned, so, yeah, why should a person spend time (and money) with an unfinished product?

But like a lot of things I once nodded in agreement to, my thinking has changed on this. I have a daily newspaper subscription now. Here are a few reason I’m finding the first draft of history a worthwhile investment.

There is no final draft.

“First draft” applies an unhelpful standard to journalistic work, the same way that “scientific” does when used on Biblical writing. Yes, news writing employs editors who force multiple drafts from reporters, but those edits are chasing a standard concerned with accuracy and verifiability, not finality. It’s about what we know now and not what may ultimately be known some time in the future.

Newspapers contain more than news. There is also feature and opinion.

There is no final draft.

Reporters are artists. Engaging the work of artists at every stage is rewarding. To follow the writing of one reporter on one story over several new developments is beneficial, because good reporters model how to claim clearly what is without doubt now, as well as what we don’t know yet, what we thought we knew, and what may never be known. It is healthy to have a grasp of the difference between those things.

The first draft of news reporting is public. It contributes to a shared understanding of reality. If facts are wrong, the public can challenge them. That’s worthwhile.

There is no final draft.

Seriously, read a newspaper.

 

November is the month to launch sign ups for summer mission trips, which we do primarily online. It’s a project, for sure, requiring several steps: secure the sites and dates for the trips, estimate the cost–including travel, food, lodging, recreation, and any program expenses–, design the web page with the descriptions of the trips, set up the sign up (and payment) mechanism with a clear deadline, set up the process for recruiting leaders for the trips, and the communicate those sign up and recruitment processes throughout the congregation in emails, flyers, and worship bulletin announcements.

All of that is November work. For trips that happen in June and July.

Being a stickler for the details at this stage will allow for flexibility and spontaneity later. Make a budget for the trip’s recreation, for example, but don’t plan it all out yet. Set a firm registration deadline so that people who try to sign up late really want to go.

I really love this stage of mission trip work

NOTE: Urban Youth Mission in Chicago has spots open for youth groups in its summer 2019 program. Now is the time to inquire about dates.

I remember telling someone in the summer of 2017 that I couldn’t wait until the coming November. There was nothing special circled on my November calendar, but this was in, like, June, when I was panicking over last minute mission trip preparations, lining up details for the following month’s trip to a youth conference, and working on whatever else that day required. Everything felt so strained. November, six months off, looked blissfully unhurried by comparison.

Then, of course, come November I felt just as strained as in June, and I think I told someone I couldn’t wait until May.

The days you think are coming aren’t. Those days when your calendar has fewer commitments on it and you can really just focus on the things that feel the most substantive–they’re an illusion.

We do our work in perpetual seasons of strain. If we’re smart we spread that strain out, because there’s no benefit in manufacturing panic for the sake of productivity. Strain is not panic, though. Strain is the ever-present push to do good work, a tautness on the rope of our vocation. We need it.

Our calling is to make the things we care about in the time we have. We wish we had more time, and we’re sure the thing would be better if there were fewer other things demanding our attention simultaneously. But if that were the case the thing wouldn’t end up being the thing we need; the strain of your other commitments gives this work character and flavor. That’s more interesting–and probably more helpful–than whatever it is you think you could make in a vacuum free of demands and pressure.

We want to see the strain in your work.