Another weekend has passed and I am thinking that if time keeps flying by–as it seems to be doing in my life–I am going to be 75 years old before I know it. My friends and I drove to Anaheim Friday morning. I think they were happy to discover the surprise: that we were staying at the Disneyland Hotel, instead of bargain ones we had talked about. The park was not crowded, the weather perfect…all in all a very nice weekend away. We had an ongoing joke about Dinsey’s perception of reality. They have this way of making their own little world. I was never sure if what I was seeing was real, or just real to Disney! All that to say, I’m happy to be home where I know that all of the birds outside and squirrels on our patio are really real, and a cup of tea doesn’t cost $3.

This weekend I’ve been brewing on a question. What am I doing with the time that I have? I’m not referring to some sort of “Carpe Diem”, take-chances, live-life-to-the-fullest mentality. I’m referring to a verse I read from the Gideon’s Bible at the hotel this weekend. Romans 14:17 “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Sometimes my life seems to be boxed into my own little world. What is real to me. Life can easily become all about the what rather than the how and the why and the who of life. I can see how I have become preoccupied with the what in my life. “What am I going to eat and drink?”, “What am I getting out of this?”, “What does anybody do for me?”, “What next?” I was convicted when reading this because though I don’t want to be about the eating and drinking, it is so easy to become about the wrong things with if I am lazy, undisciplined, and not alert. The eating and drinking of life is simply there. I don’t have to wrestle with convicting challenges or forming right thoughts and habits. Eating is simply a fact of life. If I am going to be about the kingdom of God, I have to be broken, willing to grow, void of myself, and surrendered to God. If righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit are what I long to be about it will have to be regardless of the eating and drinking in my life. Someone once said that Christians walking in the Spirit are able to live uninfected and unaffected by circumstances. I am humbled by this reminder that the kingdom of God is not about what is happening, it is about a righteous response, doing as far as it depends on me to be at peace and finding joy not in what is happening but in the Holy Spirit who is orchestrating it all together. I don’t want to miss this lesson and find myself 75 years old having lived for myself and what is going on in life. I want to have this kingdom-mentality of life and time so that it won’t matter where I am or what I’m doing becasue in Him is the happiest place to be on earth or anywhere for all time…