Making It In Ministry

“Coronavirus.” “COVID-19.” “Everything going on right now.”  No matter what you call it, the last couple months have, undoubtedly, drastically impacted the way you’re living life today. Maybe you’re an essential worker, still traveling to work every day, or maybe you’re working from home, spending more time on phone calls than ever before. Maybe you’re a parent, now learning how to also be a teacher. There’s not one person that hasn’t been challenged by this experience.

It’s my observation, or call it an opinion, if you want, that we’ve seen both the best and the worst in people over the last several weeks. On one hand, people have never been more aware of or concerned about the health and safety of others around them. I would guess that grandparents and the seniors in your community are receiving more check-ins from family and friends than they ever have. People are meeting their neighbors for the first time. There seems to be a “we’re all in this together” mindset taking over. On the other hand, we’re also experiencing and/or witnessing elevated levels of stress, anxiety and fear in ourselves, in our families, and in the people we encounter when we venture outside of our homes. Unfortunately, stress, anxiety and fear rarely produce good fruit. Instead, they produce impatience, judgments, anger..the list goes on.

As this shared human experience continues, and especially coming right off Holy Week, I’m reminded of the new command Jesus gives the disciples hours before he’s arrested. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34 NIV 

“As I have loved you…,” Jesus says. With grace, with the understanding that our sinful human condition limits our ability to be all that God made us to be. That’s how Jesus loves us…a perfect, unconditional love, in spite of our failures, and that’s how he calls us to love one another. Now, more than ever, the people around us need to be loved with the love of Jesus, and shown so much grace. Practically, that looks like this: 

Shoppers, be patient and kind as you make your way through the grocery store. It’s not the checker or the stocker’s fault that they’re out of a product. Store employees, be patient with the people frantically searching for something specific, or trying to get in and out as quickly as possible. 

Parents, be kind to your child’s teacher while he or she creates brand new content to teach your students online without all the resources of their classroom. Teachers, be patient with your students’ parents that are learning how to be educators without the resources of your classroom. 

Citizens, be respectful of your first responders, emergency workers, city officials and government as they set aside their own fears and concerns in order to best serve the community as a whole. Officials, first responders, and emergency personnel, act with patience and wisdom to reassure the people you serve.

Patients, recognize the stress and pressure your healthcare providers are under right now. Show your gratitude, now more than ever, for what they do and the fact that they often put themselves at risk, something most of us take for granted. Healthcare professionals, first of all, thank you! Secondly, be gentle with your patients, friends, family members, acquaintances, who are looking to you for answers and likely blowing up your phone outside of office hours.

Pastors and other church workers, acknowledge the fears and frustrations of your members with grace and understanding, as their church, where they turn to for comfort, strength and familiarity during times of struggle, is now less accessible when they need it most. Act with humility. Church members, know that the staff at your church is doing everything they can to continue doing ministry for you and alongside you. Offer grace when online service isn’t exactly what you’re used to. 

Friends with deep concerns, don’t forget to talk to your friends and families about other things besides the virus. Friends not as fearful, offer a listening ear to your friends and family members that are scared and worried. 

Y’all, no two people are experiencing this the same way, and yet we’re all experiencing the same things. Live with grace. Love one another. 

Do you ever have days where, when it’s over, you look back on the day and think to yourself, “What did I even accomplish today?” I had one of those moments just a little bit ago.  It’s 7:30 on Saturday night, and I’m sitting in a Starbucks, completing my teacher homework for the class I have tomorrow morning. I know what you’re thinking…party animal. In all honesty, I’m quite content to sit and sip coffee, with the most eclectic selection of music playing softly in the background, at any time of day, but I did catch myself wondering how I got to this point of spending this Saturday night doing work.  What did I do all week? Some might say I was procrastinating, and, while I have been known to “work better under pressure,” I know that’s not the case tonight.

I actually had a GREAT week at work this week. I love my job so much, but not every week can be full of fun.  Sometimes your list of things to get done is just too long. More often than not, it seems that the less fun, just checking things off the list, kind of weeks are the ones that feel the most productive, while the weeks that are a blast are the ones that have you feeling like you wasted a week, because you have nothing concrete to point to when someone says, “What’d you do this week?”

What did I do this week? This week, I taught all the classes and attended all the meetings on my calendar, but ALSO, I ate lunch with students, got involved in a game of “hand tag” with 4th graders, saw ALL the things the Pre-K class was creating and building, celebrated co-worker birthdays, played several games of knock out, attended a livestock show to support a couple youth, and watched some of my middle school youth compete in the state basketball tournament. This week was all about relationships, and I loved every minute of it.

I have to give myself this pep talk often.  A day, or even whole week, with no concrete evidence of productivity is not a wasted work week.  I might take weeks, months or years before I see the fruit of the work I did this week, but I know that my relational week this week was just as important to ministry as a week spent at my desk in the office.

I don’t know what you do for a career, and I don’t know what the expectations are, but my guess is you have moments that are similar.  Days that don’t feel productive may have been much more effective than you think.

So, I’ll gladly sit here, in this empty Starbucks on Saturday night, prepping for Sunday morning.

“Welcome to Texas!” I’ve been welcomed to Texas more times than I can count since I moved from the Chicago suburbs to rural central Texas a couple months ago.  I’ve been welcomed by church members, by sales associates and cashiers, and by the Highway Patrol officer that I already got to meet. I’ve even been welcomed to Texas by former Texas residents that now live in other parts of the country.  Texans LOVE Texas, and everyone is an ambassador for the state. They also come equipped with loads of fun facts to share about their state. Did you know Texas used to be its own country? Or that there’s a pledge of allegiance to the Texas Flag? Do you remember the Alamo?  Get your camera ready for bluebonnet season! Also, if you think your state makes good bbq, you’re wrong. Have I mentioned that Texas was its own country?

I don’t say any of that to poke fun at Texans.  The truth is I love it here. The people have been great, and have made this 1100 mile move so easy.  The Texas pride just makes me smile.

Do you have a thing that you love that much, or that you’re that proud to be part of? Something that you love SO much that you have a mental file of fun facts ready to share with family, friends, strangers, or anyone that will listen? I was considering this the other day, and wondering what my “thing” is, and I was struggling to come up with an answer. Enter a holy nudge…”Hey, Katie.  How about your faith? That maybe could or SHOULD be your thing.” Oh yeah. That. That piece of who I am that has lead me (or shoved me, as the case may be) to where I am today. I certainly try my best to live out my Christian faith every day, and, on top of that, I’ve also made a career out of church work. It is literally my job to find ways to share as much as I can about my Christian faith with the people that I serve, so it was convicting when I couldn’t immediately identify my faith as my “thing”.

What if I talked about Jesus the way Texans talk about Texas?  What does that look like? Maybe I could be a great “did you know…” person. “Did you know Jesus loves you so much that he left heaven for the sole purpose of dying? Did you know that he took your place on the cross so that your sins are forgiven? Did you know that those days when the weight of your sin is crushing, he is your source of hope? Did you know that when you’ve failed, he’s there to dust you off and send you back out with a fresh start? Have I mentioned that he loves you?”

Sometimes, though, I’m more of an “actions speak louder than words” person, more comfortable sharing my faith through what I do and how I act, rather than a direct conversation. Maybe I crack my Bible open in a busy Starbucks, or pray before meals, even in restaurants. Maybe I regularly engage in service to my community, even if it’s just stopping by a neighbor’s house to say “Hi, been thinking about ya’.”  

You know, Texans don’t just talk about Texas to talk about Texas. They really, truly love Texas, and being Texan is a major part of their identity. Being a Christian is no different, with the exception that it’s even more central to who we are. I don’t talk about my faith just to talk about it, and I don’t talk about it just because it’s my job. I talk about it because I really, truly love Jesus, and I want to share that. Whether you work in the church or not, whether you’re great at the “did you knows” or prefer to let your actions speak for themselves, my prayer is that we all feel confident in our identity as Christians so that we can enthusiastically and unapologetically share our faith with anyone and everyone we meet.  

You want to hear a joke? Summer Break.  

Every year, as the summer approaches, a rather surprising number of people ask me what I’m going to do with myself during the break, while the kids are away.  To be fair, having a school as part of our church’s ministry can sometimes give the impression that everything stops for the summer, and sometimes, I even let myself get lulled into a false sense that things will slow down when summer hits.  Reality check: it doesn’t. (Side note: even teachers, who are technically “on break” don’t take the summer off. Because they are superheroes in real life. That’s a whole other topic.)

So far, my summer has looked like this: 3 weeks of VBS planning and prep, 1 week of actual VBS, a few days traveling to spend time with my family, and a few days at a ministry conference. When I got back home a few days ago, I was just dead. I hadn’t allowed myself any real rest in weeks. Physically, mentally and emotionally, I was feeling it, and I was frustrated, because I’m Katie Otto and I’m a coffee-powered superhuman that doesn’t need breaks and I will come up with all the solutions eventually. So there (arms crossed for emphasis).

Except that’s not true. And then I got a text from a friend that said “Katie,” and you know they’re serious when they use your name in a text message, “It’s totally ok for you to feel how you’re feeling sometimes.” All I could do was sit and stare and read and reread this text message that so directly, but so gently hit me with exactly what I needed to hear, and in that moment, I gave myself permission to “just be.”

Just be. Bear with me, because I know this is going to sound cheesy, but to “just be” actually requires a significant amount of work. It’s not zoning out on the couch or curling up with a book, although those can be an effective means of rest for some people.  Instead, I actually have to get more in tune with what my body is saying…identify the feeling and respond to that feeling, not respond with how I’d like to handle it, but respond with what it actually needs. If I’m hungry, eat. If I’m sleepy, sleep. If I’m sad, cry about it…no one’s here to watch. If I’m angry, guess what? That’s ok too.  Over the last 3 days, with the exception of a few “have to’s,” I’ve let my body be in control. I’ve eaten, I’ve worked, I’ve talked with friends, I’ve spent significant time in God’s Word, and I’ve slept like 32 hours.

My favorite thing about these lessons that I learn is when I can see so clearly how God orchestrated it. It would be easy for me to list all the other things I should’ve been doing over these past few days, but tonight, just when I was starting to feel a little guilty about that, I went to church, where Pastor’s sermon was all about rest.  It was a reminder that Jesus invites us to rest, and gives us the freedom to do so. The Pharisees challenge Jesus on his teachings regarding the sabbath several times, and his response is always the same. The sabbath day of rest isn’t about not doing anything. More than anything, it’s an opportunity and an invitation for us, as creation, to reconnect with our creator, to be both physically and spiritually cared for. Tune out or strip away everything else and just be. Just be with Jesus. And rest.

“I’m hilarious.” That’s a statement I make often, but only to a small group of people, a group of people that I know won’t judge me as arrogant, but will just take it the way I intend it and roll their eyes at me.  Recently, though, I posted an Instagram story about hearing a thumping sound when I was at work alone, which prompted someone to suggest that I should make YouTube videos. Here’s the thing…I would love to make YouTube videos. Or start a podcast. Or do anything like that, just because I think it would be fun.  It doesn’t seem that hard…I mean, ask the people closest to me…they’ll tell you I have side commentary on literally EVERYTHING. I have a lot to say about life as it happens around me.

Then, when I actually think about what I would do or say in an official format, like a podcast or YouTube channel, I get completely stumped.  “Do I actually have anything of value to share?” That, my friends, is where we get a clear picture of one of my fears and faults.

 

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Does anyone actually think about something just the right amount?  I feel like we live in a world of people who either don’t think at all before they speak or act, or way overthink everything.  I fall into that latter category for SURE. “Can I post that? Say that? Share that? Is it relevant enough? Is it funny enough? Will they get the joke? Is it ok for me, as a Christian? As a church worker? Would anyone care to see this? Will someone be offended by this?” The list goes on and on and on…

Social media, if we’re being honest, enables both kinds of people, but I would bet it’s had a much more damaging effect on the people like me, who overthink everything.  We’re totally putting ourselves out there for people to judge, to “react” to us. So now we spend even more time thinking. (That’s probably part of why I’ve struggled to write this blog consistently.)  

Additionally, social media allows us to cherry pick which pieces of our lives we share.  I was recently talking to a group of students about that idea, that, often times, people share only the best parts of what’s going on.  No one is going to post a picture of their ripped pants after they fall down (although I assured them that’s exactly the kind of thing I’d post, which is true!).  They post when they’re at the beach, or doing some other kind of awesomely awesome thing.

Sooooooo, I’m committing to you right now, but mostly to myself, that I’m going to stop overthinking how I share myself with the world. I’ll share about the ridiculous things that happen to me.  I’ll let you hear my commentary on life every now and then. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find out that I am, in fact, hilarious. 

When I was in school, although I almost never admitted it, math was one of my favorite subjects. It wasn’t at all that I just really loved doing math. I’m not sitting down in my free time, crunching some numbers and having a great time.  I mean, trying to do my taxes used to make me cry (365 days tear free!). What I liked about math was that math has correct answers, and is, therefore, very satisfying.  There’s not a scale of right and wrong in math.  It’s either right OR it’s wrong, and that’s how I like it.  I’d rather do a hundred algebra problems than write a two page essay on the deeper meaning of a piece of literature.  Please.

I don’t think I’m alone in this, though.  I generally think that we have a tendency to prefer either/or over both/and when it comes to living life. We like black and white situations, where there are clear choices for us to make or definite solutions to our problems. That’s probably why coin tosses were invented. The reality is, though, we live in one giant gray area, where ‘x’ does not equal anything, and we’re left to wrestle with our own opinions. And, great news, we’ve also all CHOSEN to immerse ourselves in the opinions of others by being on social media, so now we can factor that in, too.  If you haven’t looked lately, that’s working realllllllly well for people.

 

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As a Christian, I obviously have a clear set of morals and values, based on Scripture, that are black and white for me.  The challenge comes in translating that to real life, with real people, in a world infected with real sin, and suddenly I find myself swimming around in the gray area again. Anyone that’s worked in ministry can tell you that “WWJD?” is more than a reminder to be on your best behavior.  What WOULD Jesus actually do? It’s a legitimate question that gets deeply debated, and doesn’t always have a clear, easy answer.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot, and trying to work through, is how do I reconcile my faith with being a citizen of this country, and living in this world? In our current climate, it feels like you’re expected to subscribe fully to one set of opinions or the other, and there’s little tolerance for people that try to float somewhere in the middle, where it’s uncomfortable.  And gray.  So as I wrestle with all of that, I’m finding comfort in the fact that Jesus did his whole ministry in the uncomfortable, and I think he’d be living it up in the gray area with me.

and you do too.  Probably. I’m *finally* starting to embrace this fact of life, but why is it so hard to admit I need help? And why is it even harder to ask for it?

I don’t think I’m alone in this.  Asking for and accepting help doesn’t come naturally to very many people I know (even though most of the people I know would help someone else in a heartbeat).  We may have a variety of reasons for why we don’t, but what it really comes down to, for me, is pride.  Admitting I need help is an admission that I lack the ability to do something, and, really, who enjoys acknowledging everything they CAN’T do?

At the risk of sounding arrogant, let me tell you about me.  In high school and college, I was a “get stuff done” kid.  Teach me or tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.  School was easy for me.  I was president of several groups, and an active participant of several more.  I succeeded at almost everything I tried.  In my mind, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do (although reflecting as an adult, I know that really I just avoided those things that I wasn’t great at).

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So, starting my adult life, I wasn’t used to needing other people.

But we were created to need other people.  That’s why God made Eve for Adam.  We’re supposed to live in community and in relationships with each other, and guess what. That even means relying on each other for help and *gasp* specifically asking for it. And this, friends, is where I’m at today.  This humbled place of recognizing that I need help to do ministry and life the best that I can.

For me, the key is finding people that you respect and trust, who give a sense that they care about you.  When you find the right people, asking for help becomes a little easier.  There are some obvious ones that everyone kind of has built in, to some degree. Being a Christian, I turn to God for the assist on the regular, although even there pride gets in the way.

I have a family that loves me fiercely, and always has.

I have a best friend that would do just about anything for anyone.

And then there are some that aren’t quite as obvious, and also require a little bit more courage and humility to find.  A professional mentor, for example.  I’m lucky enough to have one of those, and it’s a conversation I had with her over the weekend that really prompted this string of thought about needing other people.

So, I’m not asking you to think about whether or not you need help doing your thing.  With a little humble self reflection, I think we both know the answer to that.  My question is WHO do you have or WHO can you bring into your life to be those people for you?

Do you ever have moments where an event from your past spontaneously pops into the forefront of your mind?  Tonight at dinner, the conversation around the table was about taking the bus to school, and I was reminded of one particular morning, when I was seconds away from missing the bus, which was a regular occurrence for me.  I grabbed my things and rushed out of the house, heading for the gap in the hedgerow that provided the most direct route to the road.  In my rush, I hopped over the rope that hung as a “fence” around our swimming pool with quite a bit more vigor than I normally did, and hooked my foot, causing me to fall into the wet grass.

At the time, for middle school me, that was a horrifying experience.  Obviously everyone already on the bus witnessed this, I had grass stains on my knees, and it probably hurt.  Tonight, though, I cannot stop laughing about it.  Like I had tears in my eyes trying to tell the story. No big.  So many of those “horrifying” moments from my past are no big deal now.  I can laugh about them, and I can share them with people.  There are other moments, though, that still make me cringe, moments that I wish I could forget and certainly am in no rush to share with anyone else.  The truth is that sometimes these “hard to face” moments are the ones that have the most influence on my personal growth, or lack thereof, as the case may sometimes be.

 

Rafiki, the wisest (but craziest) of all the Disney characters, gives Simba a life lesson about the past in one of my favorite scenes in The Lion King:

Run from it, or learn from it.  Two choices.  In Simba’s case, running from the past kept him from becoming who he was supposed to be, and I don’t think it’s any different for me.  Ignoring the past, avoiding thinking about those cringeworthy moments, won’t make them go away.  They’re almost haunting.  The best thing I can do for myself is to take that experience and identify what there is for me to learn from it.  Why does it bother me so much, and what can I change to make sure I don’t experience this situation the same way again?
In my last post, I mentioned that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about myself and how the person that I am affects the way I live life.  I have control over that.  I control the person that I am.  I can’t control the situation.  I can’t control the way other people respond to me, but I can control me.  Part of the way I can do that is by asking those questions when I’ve experienced an uncomfortable situation.  What have I learned from this, and what will I change?  Like Simba, confronting those moments can help put me on a more direct path to be the person I was created to be, and when I put those moments to work for me, they become no big.

Amen, Dr. Jones. I recently watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time, and I shuddered on the couch as I watched through the gaps in my fingers while Indy waded through all those snakes. Safe to say that, was it me that had to go into the Well of Souls to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant, well…the Nazis can have it. There’s not enough money in the world to get me to go into a pit full of snakes.  Shoot.  There’s not enough money in the world to get me to go into pit with ONE snake.

I can’t even begin to describe to you just how much I don’t like snakes.  I’m deathly afraid of them, and I have been for as long as I can remember.  Still to this day, at age 26, I have nightmares about snakes. People try to say, “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.” NOPE. You know when schools used to have assemblies where people would bring in all their cool animals, and, without fail, there was always some gigantic snake that they wanted you to come pet? No thank you. Reptile house at the zoo? Pass. Recently, someone told me of a house infested with snakes, and the people living there caught over 400 snakes IN the house. Worst nightmare.

So you can imagine my excitement to see this sign by the walking path at a retreat center in Florida:

 

I mean, thanks for the warning, I guess.

 

I did end up walking the path a few times during my time there. It ended up being a really great cardio workout, because my heart rate was elevated before I even started moving, but it also gave me a sense of accomplishment. Of course it didn’t “cure” me of my fears, but I had two choices. Option One: Avoid the path and, therefore, avoid anything that might be on it or around it.  Option Two: Suck it up, put on my big girl pants, and go for a walk. Neither option is 100% safe.  I’m quite sure that the snakes don’t see the sign and turn around, like “Oh, we can’t go past there,” so avoiding the path isn’t guaranteed to keep me away from snakes.  On the other hand, walking straight in, knowing the possibility of what could be ahead, well…that’s not guaranteed snake free either.  So how do you choose? For me, it’s which option has the greatest reward.

I was facing this (minor) dilemma while attending the first session of Emergent Leader Training in Oviedo, Florida, where I spent a lot of time learning about myself, and reflecting on how who I am affects the way I lead in life and in ministry.  

What I learned is that I often face a similar dilemma in life and ministry.  I have to make a choice. Do I do what’s comfortable and appears safe, or do I take the risk? I realized through the first part of this training that I like to be comfortable.  I don’t like to shake things up.  I don’t like to disagree with people.  I don’t like to create or confront conflict. In fact, all of those things kind of scare me.

The majority of this first session was focused on what the trainers have dubbed “The Leader’s Crucial Work.” Daryl Pichan, the main facilitator of this session, laid this information out in the context of what he calls “The Arena of Crucial Work,” the balance between Clarity, Connection, and Courage. As we worked through the material, we were directed to keep thinking about how what we were discovering about ourselves affects our ability to be clear, our ability to connect with others, and our ability to act with courage.  It was not hard for me to identify “courage” as the piece that I need to work at the most. Like I said, I like to be comfortable.

Being courageous requires that our actions are consistent with our determined goals and values, and that they have everyone’s best interests at heart.  I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on that, and what exactly that means.  It raises questions that have uncomfortable answers.  Is it courageous of me, as a leader, to keep my mouth shut when I don’t agree? Am I acting with courage when I avoid difficult conversations?  Pichan even raised the question of whether or not it’s even Christian to just “roll over and be nice.” 

Just like with the snakes, choosing what appears to be safe won’t always guarantee comfort, so which choice has the greater reward? Maybe the one that pushes me to grow as a person and confront the very things that challenge me most.

How do you decide what’s beautiful and what’s not? I’m not talking about beauty standards for people. (In 25 years of being a girl and 3 years of working with youth, I’ve found those to be more harmful than anything.) I’m talking about a general sense of beauty…something so awesome that you don’t even know how to respond, or a life event that lifts your spirits so high that no one can bring you down. Or maybe it’s in something that’s so simple, but that holds so much meaning for you. For example, the birth of a baby. Parents and/or grandparents post a picture of a brand new baby, and receive a flood of comments about how beautiful he or she is.  If we’re being honest, NO baby is cute immediately upon arrival. BUT the whole concept of a new life being brought into the world is a beautiful thing, leaving people completely in awe, so in that sense, that new baby absolutely is beautiful!

 

The thing about beauty is that it’s totally experiential.  What any one person finds beautiful depends solely upon his or her own experiences, which, in turn, makes it a personal thing. That means that what you find beautiful may not be viewed in the same way by someone else.  Following my vacation a few weeks ago, I thought a lot about this idea of beauty, and it being tied to experience.  Our trip took us west, through the Badlands, which I literally couldn’t stop saying how incredible they were (sorry, Mom and Dad!) and the Black Hills, to Mt. Rushmore, which you haven’t really experienced until you’ve been standing at the base of the mountain, up into nowhere Wyoming, and down into Colorado.

 

I’ve seen a lot of places in our great country.  I’ve been to the Grand Canyon, to Florida beaches, up in the mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park, now through the Badlands, down south on swamp tours, Times Square in New York City, and the argument could be made for each of those places that they’re the most beautiful place in our country.  But it’s all in how you experience it.  For example, most people could agree on the beauty found in a lot of those places, but then there are other places that may require a more personal connection to find the beauty.  Most people (“most” being a calculation I’ve made based solely on what I hear from other people) find the miles and miles and miles of flat ground covered in corn and bean fields of Central Illinois insanely boring terrain to have to drive through.  However, that’s the place that I call home, and because of that very personal reason, I find so much beauty in that.  

The definition of beauty is all perspective and personal experience, regardless of how and where it’s being applied.  Not long ago, my personal experiences were telling me that beauty in life was nearly non-existent.  I was pretty much convinced that real life was made up primarily of challenging situations with no easy fix, and I thought that the times when everything was going smoothly were the exception. That’s what my experiences were telling me, BUT, I have since learned to look for the positives in every situation, and it’s completely changed how I see beauty in everyday life.  Right now, we live in a world overrun by sin.  There are so many negative things happening on daily basis…racial tensions in our communities, ISIS running rampant around the Middle East and Europe, children living in poverty all over the world, an election season that seems to be challenging a lot of people…things that make it increasingly difficult to see the beauty of life.  So how do we keep going?  I would argue that, as Christians, we have it a little bit easier, because our hope rests in the salvation won for us through Jesus Christ.  While it’s something that we constantly seem to be tested by, we’ve learned to trust in God’s plan and His timing.  For that reason, we continue to see that life is full of beautiful moments!

 

I would encourage you to look for the beauty in each day, because each day is filled with experiences that continue to shape and grow us. At the end of the day, take 5 minutes to reflect…where did God make your life beautiful today?  Take it a step further…how can you bring the beauty to someone else’s day? What can you do to engage with the people around you to give them an experience that will lead them to say, “Wow. That’s awesome,” or “That’s beautiful,” or “Maybe it’s not so bad after all?”

*Pro Tip: You don’t have to take them to the Grand Canyon.  Something as simple as acknowledging their existence when you pass them on the sidewalk can do wonderful things.

 

For more thoughts on how to engage people in your community and help share your faith, check out cultureencounter.com .