We cannot protect ourselves from trouble, but we can dance through the puddles of life with a rainbow smile, twirling the only umbrella we need — the umbrella of God’s love.
Teaching literature is teaching how to read. How to notice things in a text that a speed-reading culture is trained to disregard, overcome, edit out, or explain away; how to read what the language is doing, not guess what the author was thinking; how to take evidence from a page, not seek a reality to substitute for it.
Live for today, but hold your hands open to tomorrow. Anticipate the future and its changes with joy. There is a seed of God’s love in every event, every unpleasant situation in which you may find yourself.
We are destined for joy no matter how difficult our daily life. Something in us responds to the happiness other people experience, because we glimpse life as God intended it to be.
How will you use the years God gives you? Will you be remembered for being a fault-finder? Or will you be known for your quick smile, the laugh lines around your eyes, and the twinkle deep within? After all, God gives you your face, but you provide the expression!
We can choose to gather to our hearts the thorns of disappointment, failure, loneliness, and dismay in our present situation. Or we can gather the flowers of God’s grace, boundless love, abiding presence, and unmatched joy. I choose to gather the flowers.
I don’t have to figure out why or how or when. God has a plan, and I’m committed to it. That commitment frees me from having to worry about the details.
