During a doomed-from-the-start attempt to attain so-called abs of steel, a personal trainer friend observed that the exercises I was using were fine, but my technique was all wrong. He said I needed to “engage my core” when attempting the dreaded crunches, mountain climbers, and dead bugs. It was possible, I was told, to go through the external motions without activating my core while doing so.
God meets us in many different places. He calls us to open our hearts, eyes, and ears daily to truly feel His love, see His presence, and hear His voice. This takes time. This takes stillness. This takes quietness. In a culture where we rush from one thing to the next and feel the urgency to respond and act, we do not allow ourselves enough time, stillness, and quietness to feel, see, and hear God.
Do you ever feel insignificant, like the things you do for God are small and of little consequence, like drops in a bucket? Tychicus was a servant of God in the early church, a friend and helper to the apostle Paul. An Asian Christian from what is now known as Turkey, he probably met and ministered alongside Paul in Ephesus.
Some love is fleeting—conditional, transactional, or dependent on circumstances. But then there’s the kind of love Ruth showed Naomi—the kind that stays. When Naomi had nothing left to offer, Ruth chose her anyway. She didn’t just say she loved Naomi; she lived it. I think about this as I remember sitting beside my mom in her chemo chair. Her once-strong frame now frail, her smooth, bald head under a baseball cap. That day, she asked me to have lunch with her during treatment. But I was too busy—I “needed” to get in my lunchtime workout and eat my salad with light dressing. Still, she asked.
As the primary caregiver for my husband, battling stage 4 cancer, I often felt like I was on a relentless merry-go-round. Each day began with an emotional toll that was hard to bear, filled with doctor appointments, medication schedules, and the heart-wrenching reality of watching someone I love fight for his life. One particularly exhausting evening, I found myself sitting in my car, tears streaming down my face, feeling utterly overwhelmed.