I didn’t.

Now I do, and if you can extrapolate that perhaps the central verse of the whole Bible might be the one thing God wants us to “get,” then it’s worth knowing, even memorizing.

Enjoy!

Let the images and song linger … and become a mental break after listening to the news.

Our roads are a mess here. Many cracks, many potholes. This snowy, icy winter has added even more damage.

As I walked, I suddenly stopped.  Something caught my eye.

The shape of a particular crack arrested me. It looked just like …  a heart!

Our newspaper recently did a photo story on heart shapes in nature. God’s hidden messages–hidden except for those with the eyes to see.

Here was another heart shape, symbol of love. But not in the natural world. In the world humans made, in the road made up of asphalt and dirt and salt.

It’s not so difficult to believe God’s love shows up in the natural realm. But in the world so marred by both human and natural affliction–can we expect to find God’s stamp of love?

Yet, here it is. Here in the broken road is a symbol of love.

It made me think of a verse in Jeremiah 18. “This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ‘Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.’ So I went down to the potter’s hour, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him” (verses 1-4).

Here we are, going along the road of life, and cracks happen. Things get broken up. The clay was marred in his hands. And yet, sometimes there’s a message, in the very cracks themselves.

A message of love. A message of, “so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.”

Can you see messages of love, even in the “cracks” on your road?

I challenge you to look for them.

Because you know what? The crack you see in this picture is not the only one I see anymore.

Now that I’m looking for them, I see them everywhere! I even saw one in an ice patch the other day! I didn’t have my camera with me, and it’s gone now, but here are some others:

Notice that some of the shapes are not  quite heart shapes … but neither are our own attempts to love. Neither is our perception of God’s love in the cracks of our road. Those cracks can feel like nothing more than stumbling blocks. Potential disasters.

Yet, if we really look, if we can perceive with understanding, perhaps we can see the actual shape, even if it is a crack. Or,  as with one of them, an actual pothole.

Symbols of love. In the cracks. In the cracks of the road you walk every day.

Try looking … and tell me what you see! (Comment below, or send me your pics!)

One of the highlights of Christmas this year also sheds a little light on what I think we can expect from God in the coming year.

It was my son’s gift to his sister.

David loves to give gifts. I’m sure it’s his “language of love.” For Mother’s Day, he bought me a wonderful digital camera. This Christmas, he bought Christine an ipod.

I think what he loves most of all is the look of surprised joy when the recipient opens the present: “You bought this for ME?!”

That’s probably why he wrapped Christine’s ipod in a very special way. Knowing she would immediately guess if he just wrapped the package it came in, he put it in a bigger box. Wrapped it. Then he put that into a very large box and wrapped it (all by himself, I might add).

Yes, she was surprised–and joyful.

I can’t help but think that God likes to do something very similar with us.

As I reflect back on the highlights of 2009, it’s been an amazing year of unexpected abundant gifts for me. God has taken me places I never dreamed I’d be, and I’ve met so many wonderful people I never expected to meet.

Healed in ways I never dreamed were possible….

With God, I’m discovering, we need to expect the unexpected!

And sometimes, the blessings come disguised in packages that look like anything but blessings. Unemployment. Loss of health. Struggles and heartaches of all kinds.

In the coming year, I will be sharing some of what I’m learning particularly about “disguised gifts.” These lessons have been some of the greatest blessings of the past year for me. (You might want to make sure you’re subscribed to this blog.)

Another source of the richest blessings for me has been simply getting into God’s Word, for myself and for others as I write the Encouraging Words and Abundant Gifts from the Word free email devotionals. The Bible daily astonishes me by its relevance; it truly is a living Word, as the Holy Spirit applies it to our personal situations in amazing ways.

It’s also been an abundant gift to receive emails from people who say that God’s Word, or my word, spoke to their hearts on a particular day. That is God at work!

If you have not signed up yet for Abundant Gifts from the Word (no cost, you can unsubscribe any time), I encourage you to do so:
http:/www.abundantgiftsfromtheword.com

And if you had signed up but have somehow stopped getting them, please sign up again. I discovered a glitch that made these daily devotional stop after a couple of months. I have plenty to share, so sign up again and keep it coming!

One thing I know for sure: His blessings will come, if we’re open to them. And they often come in unexpected packages.

May 2010 be full of abundant, mind-bending blessings!

So here’s a quick note to wish you a most blessed holiday season:

• A Hanukkah full of new light that continues to illuminate your world …
• A Christmas overflowing with the gifts only the Savior can give …
• A new year blessed with all the things that make your heart sing …

And I invite you to sit back and listen to one of my favorite Christmas stories from my book,  Abundant Gifts. It’s called “The Lord’s Presence Passing By” and I think you’ll like it.

I’ve been told that the proper translation for “cheerful” in this verse is “hilarious.”

I thought of that today as I was paying bills.

It was a task I’d been putting off a couple of days because right now, there seem to be a LOT of expenses. Seems like “education” even for public schools is a bigger and bigger piece of the budget. Not to mention, I now have a child in college (who thankfully did get a major scholarship–provision!).

When I finally knuckled down and wrote the checks, I also wrote one for our church and the ministries we support. I thought about “hilarious giving.”

It seemed to fit.

As in:

“Get ahold of this. I wrote a check for my church, which brought my bank account to zero. So I said,

‘Lord, I’m trusting you to provide for the rest of my bills, because you’re the one person I don’t want to short change.’

“I checked the mailbox, half hoping there would be a surprise check.

“Nope.

“Ah, but I’d forgotten about that other kind of mail we have nowadays. Within two hours, I got an email saying a payment (totally unexpected) was ready in my Paypal account. Isn’t that hilarious?”

Yes, God loves a “hilarious” giver. He likes to make us laugh with delight at how he provides.

Oh, and not too long ago, as I was shelling out money for school clothes, I tried to remember the last time I’d bought new clothes.

Shortly after, on my walk, I came across a garage sale in my neighborhood. I got a like-new winter jacket, dress, dress pants, and 5 pairs of jeans for, I think, $11.

(To get the full impact of the 5 pairs of jeans, click her to read an earlier post.)

God loves a hilarious giver because … that’s how he himself likes to give.

So lighten up! A joke is just around the corner (if you trigger it by “hilarious” giving).

P. S. In the  few hours since I posted this, I talked to someone who told me he owes me money (through some sales I didn’t know that I made).  Hilarious!

It’s only 4 minutes long. Click, sit back and watch, and I hope it will give you new eyes to see the gifts of today. (I’m not scowling, really–just squinting in the sun. Next time I’ll be more aware of the sun! Still getting this video thing down….)

(Little side note: This was shot 2 days ago, and when I tried to get it on this blog, something happened to the blog. In the process of trying to fix that problem, I contacted a friend. The results of that contact blessed us both, reigniting and deepening our friendship. So the “problem” of my blog being messed up was really a “disguised gift,” resulting in blessing for both of us. Remember: God is good, and at work even in our problems.)

I am pleased to make those available to you as well, as “Abundant Gifts from the Word.”

Every day, until you decide to stop it, you can receive a very brief meditation on a Scripture taken from the New Living Translation (NLT).

I can’t tell you how I myself have been blessed in writing these.

Every morning, I pray that God would open my heart to the truths he wants me to see and pass on, open my Bible, read and start writing.

Each meditation is 100 words or less.

People have told me that this is the one email they make sure they read every day. They write and tell me how much a particular message blessed them.

I can honestly say that nothing has blessed me, strengthened me, or given me more joy than God’s Word. My prayer is that you, too, will fall in love with God more through his Word.

Just go to www.abundantgiftsfromtheword.com to read some samples and sign up.

(By the way, there is no charge for these. Freely I’ve been given, freely I give.)

We’re studying the Gospel of John. I would like to share insights from this study here on this blog.

One of the life-transforming truths I’m gleaning from John is the whole idea of abiding (from John 15). “There is only one vine, Jesus, and we can either choose to remain connected to it, or we can cut ourselves off from it. The main thing we need to do as Christians is abide in the vine.”

Recently, I spent time with a friend who, I discovered, follows a “spiritual master” and wakes at 3 a.m. to meditate for 4 hours. “Why?” I asked, amazed.

“Well, you know,” she said. “If you want to be close to God, there are certain things you have to do to get there.”

I said, “Not really. All I think I’m asked to do is abide.”

I believe this is the great Good News of the Christian message. We really do not have to do anything. Religion says you have to follow all these rules. But Jesus said, “Abide in me, the same way you’ve seen me abiding in my Father. You see our relationship, one of complete trust. Now trust me, abide in me, the same way. It’s all about relationship. I am the vine, you are the branches. Just abide in me, and the rest comes naturally, like fruit from a vine that is rooted in good soil.”

One thing abiding means, I’m discovering, is that I don’t have to try to give anything I have not first received from Jesus. Like Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, the main thing is to listen first. Martha was all agitated by everything she had to do. Mary first sat and listened, and Jesus said she chose the better way.

Perhaps Mary then got up and helped Martha. Peacefully. Full. Able to give, able to do, because first she listened. First she remained at Jesus’ feet.

Abide. Abide in God’s love. Isn’t that simple? Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t that freeing?

His books have brought his fame and fortune, what most people think they want.

But recently, he’s also had to deal with cancer.

Here’s how Rick Warren is dealing with all of his abundant gifts … including, the “gift” he never wanted.  (Excerpted from an interview Rick did with Paul Bradshaw.)

“People ask me, What is the purpose of life?”

And I respond: In a nutshell, life is

preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.

One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body– but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act – the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one, or you’re getting ready to go into another one.

The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.

We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ-likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer.

I used to think that life was hills and valleys – you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that anymore.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.

No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.

And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems:
If you focus on your problems, you’re going into self-centeredness, which is my problem, my issues, my pain.’ But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her- It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people..

You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.

It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don’t think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.

So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit.. We made no major purchases.

Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.

Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.

Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity?
Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God’s purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don’t get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn’t put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He’s more interested in what I am than what I do.

That’s why we’re called human beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.

Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.

Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.

Painful moments, TRUST GOD.

Every moment, THANK GOD.

If you do not pass it on, nothing will happen. But it will just be nice to pass it on to a friend…just like I have done.

God’s Blessings

Rick has given us an abundant gift of inspiration here. Do let’s all be in prayer for Rick and Kay and their family.