Our church is beginning a new eight-week emphasis in September entitled "50 Ways/50 Days to Grow Your Faith." As part of this series each family will be receiving a 'faith can' filled with 50 family devotionals - one to do each day during the emphasis. The devos are being written by several members of the church, including yours truly. Each are relatively short and are focused on some aspect of faith. I had no problem getting the first one done. For some reason I just can't seem to keep my head in the game long enough during the course of a day this week to get the second one I am responsible for done.

I think the thing that struck me a couple of days ago, as I was pondering about what I should write about, is the reality of Hebrews 11:1 ~ "Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen." Man! That emcompasses a lot in my life! There are so many things that I hope for - that I will have a steady (or growing) job at LifeWay for years to come ... that I will grow deeper in love with my beautiful wife over the next ten years as much as I have these last ten years ... that my kids will grow to be deep people of character with a passion for the God they serve. My revelation, of sorts, was the fact that life itself is really all about faith - we simply can't escape it! I know that the focus of this passage is centered around the fact of our faith in God and His ways in our lives, in this world. The fact that faith is the reality of He, the final proof that He exists and that He loves us deeply. Yet, I don't think it stops there. I think, like most other aspects of our lives, that our everyday 'life' mirrors the greater reality of our spiritual lives and our relationships with God. Think of these things as 'baby steps in faith', so to speak, that inch us closer to being able to throw ourselves into our Father's arms wholeheartedly and unabashedly. When we face the 'hope for' things of our lives it provides us with a chance to lay a little more of who we are into the hands of the One who controls it all, anyhow.

Well, that's about it - if I could just figure out how to shorten that thought process down to about half of what it is right now (word count limits :-( ) I'd be doing good!