Living the Given Life

Living Our Days in 2024

We’re only three weeks into this brand, spankin’ new year, so I hope you’re still feeling energetic and optimistic! Life has been chugging right along here on this country hill with the BIGGEST news coming in the form of a little seven-pound blessing!

Meet Margaret Louise Morin born January 4 to Ethan and Karisa. We are bursting with love for this little girl—thank you, Lord, for your good gift of Baby Margaret!

Meanwhile, between babysitting Margaret’s big brother and sister and the belated observance of our annual sleepover-under-the-Christmas-tree with our two oldest grandkids, this January has been hoppin’!

“We Live the Given Life, and Not the Planned”

I can’t think of a better mindset for dealing with the reality that we don’t get the last word regarding the content and the shape of our lives. Our assignment, then, is to love what’s been given: the diagnosis, the interruptions, the unexpected. My first post of 2024 celebrated the Given Life and that great Wendell Berry quote.

By grace, we are enabled to accept what has been given with an open hand, to receive the given without allowing our longing for the “not given” to slay our gratitude or our ability to live present to the people God has wrapped up in the gift of our given life.

Will you join me in 2024 in giving thanks for the Given?
Are you willing to release the planned life if it cuts across what God reveals as His plan?
How can we pray for one another?

Let’s take this conversation into the comments!

A New You Version Plan for a New Year

Somewhere between the Christmas rush and the Baby Margaret rush I managed to get a new devotional plan written for the YouVersion app. It’s an overview of The Epistle to the Hebrews, a letter to a congregation of struggling Jewish Christians written by an unknown author sometime before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.  We will be landing on a few verses in each chapter with the goal of big-picture familiarity—not mastery of this fascinating and complex book.

It went live yesterday, so you can check the app or go directly to the plan by clicking the button below:

Wishing you a “FABULOUS” beginning to this new year!

Lord, “You crown the year with your bounty!” (Psalm 65:11)

Holding You in the Light,

P.S. If this post has been helpful, I’d love it if you’d spread the word to your people by sharing it.

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