An Apology To No One In Particular

I admittedly don't remember if I ever talked disparagingly about 1, 5, or 10 minute devotionals or not. I suspect I have because I certainly have thought disparaging thoughts about said devotions. Since most thoughts that stomp through my mind inevitably find their way to my mouth I am almost certain that I have. I suspect somewhere along the lines I said something like 'they are a waste of time, and money.  Any Christian worth their salt would not make use of such surface level materials'.

I have changed my mind.

Depending on our relationship, and/or if you have found your way to my other blog Other Things you may know that my wife and I are enjoying the birth of our second child. Also you may or may not know that I am currently living the life of a stay at home Dad, helping Meghan run her at home day care.

I am used to a rather unstructured day. If I want to spend a day in prayer, study and reflection typically I can do so. Most weeks I have one full day of just that, and the rest have at least an hour or more devoted to study.

Helping to run a day care does not lead itself well to long periods of quiet reflection. At all.

The first week of helping out I felt as if I was running on all cylinders everyday. Come 5pm when everyone went home I was spent. What was more I was noticing that I was really missing my time for reflection. But trying to sit and read anything complex, dense or long (my normal fair) was just out of the question.

This is what my days feel like right now

That is when I decided to pull out some old books I enjoyed mostly as a teen. Some good old Max Lucado. Now his books are not exactly 1 minute devotionals, but they are hardly complex dense or long. He seems to write a new one every six months or so, and they generally are quaint, and cover basic Christian teachings with heart warming stories. Normally I can read a book like this in an hour or less so I rarely spend money on them anymore.

However right now they are a God send. I am reading  Every Day Deserves A Chance and I am really enjoying it. A chapter a day while the kids engage in free play is working well for me. I am feeling refreshed as I read and glad to be able to have a daily devotion time again. Also the level of attention I need to maintain to read this book works fine with keeping an eye on the kids.

It seems going from student to pastor never gave me an appreciation for just how hard it can be to crave out time for study and reflection. The past three weeks have corrected that. So if I or anyone else have even given you reason to feel bad for not doing a two hour a day bible study in the original Greek, I am very sorry.

May God bless you in the business of the day!