Have you ever been to a place where you expected hospitality and received none? How did it make you feel?

• Frustrated?
• Angry?
• Annoyed?
• Disappointed?
• Unwelcome?

Each day we rise and choose. Nobody else chooses for us. It is our choice and our choice alone.

We choose joyfulness. We choose hopefulness. We choose gratefulness. We choose happiness. We choose love.

We choose anger. We choose rage. We choose frustration. We choose irritation. We choose hate.

It is our choice. Nobody can make us do anything.

Every so often there is what I call, “The Pastor’s Lament.” This is when pastors take to the social media and explain how hard it is to be a pastor. They share memes of how pastoral ministry is so hard that they age like the President of the United States. They complain about the people they serve (not in public, but in private forums).

Basically, they whine.

I too am a pastor. Are there difficult things that go with being a pastor? Absolutely.

However, let us not lament, whine, or complain for we get to be cared for by the people of God to pray, serve, study, write, preach, and lead.

When we started the Antioch Movement, what is now becoming the Acts 13 Network, we made a decision about families. We decided that we wanted families to be together in all that we did. Our hope was that families would not be separated during their times of worship.

We believe that for children to grow and see what it means to be God worshipers, they need to be with their parents. Not only that, we think that they need to see other adults worshiping God too. Also, they need to be witnesses to the worship of their peers.

Do you ever wonder about God’s promises? You know, the ones that seem to be huge and wide sweeping. The ones that seem to go on forever.

Yet, never really seem to happen.

I do.

Often.

How is your soul?

>Is it filled with anxiety? Is it filled with stress? Is it scattered? Is it weary? Is it joyous? Is it happy? Is it content?

How is your soul?

It was late fall and the leaves were almost completely off the trees but hadn’t been raked. At the end of our street was a 90 degree turn because we lived on a horseshoe. One morning, shortly after receiving my driver’s license, I was fiddling with music in my car and wasn’t paying attention. As I looked up the turn was coming at me. I slammed on the brakes and slid into a bank of mailboxes. Thinking nobody saw me, I continued on to school.

Later that day, I was home watching TV when the phone rang and my mom answered it. Something in me knew I was done for.

“Dan, were you involved in a hit and run today?” my mom asked.

“Me? No I didn’t hit anyone. Come on.” I replied.

“Well that was the police and they said someone reported that you hit the mailboxes at the end of the street this morning and fled the scene.”

“Oh. Yeah. That was me.”

“Why do bad things happen to good people?”

That’s a question that is on the tip of many tongues. Too often too many people feel as though they are experiencing injustices.

There is a great picture floating around on social media. It’s a photo of two kids on a medal platform. The kid in first place has a sour look on his face. The kid in third place is rejoicing! The caption typically reads something like this, “Happiness is all about your perspective.”

I dig that sentiment.

Are you a parent? I am and I struggle daily with being a parent. It’s really hard and scary work. Parenting is not for the faint of heart.

In America we organize everything around our kids. Over the last few years there have been helicopter parents and now lawn mower parents (I’ll let you hit the Duck Duck Go Machine if you don’t know what those are).

A conversation…

“I could never be a pastor. I don’t know how you do it."

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You have to walk through all the terrible stuff in people’s lives. You’re face to face with all the bad stuff all the time. I guess, I don’t understand how a pastor could ever stay a Christian. It seems like it would be really hard to keep the faith when you see all the times that God doesn’t do what you want."

Where do you find your roots? Is your identity rooted somewhere? How do you know who you are?

As we walk through this life I think that this might be one of the most important questions that we face. The world comes at us pretty fast and more times than not the knowledge of who we are helps us to know what to do.