Time exists in circles now. Busy morning routines, getting children out the door before 8:15 in the morning, 9:00 am classes, lunch rituals of prayer, food, recording thankful moments, collecting children at the end of the work day, preparing meals, smiles and misbehavior around the dinner table with 3 boys, cleaning up after meals, bedtime routines, storytime, prayer, sleep, stillness. And then I get up and do it all again. These circles are beginning to spin.
I am experiencing motion sickness! Does this happen to you?
There is also the dizziness of doctor appointments, errands, homework checks, and trips to the grocery store.
I am spun sick dizzy before 9 in the morning.
And then there is the mundane going into the fridge and getting pomegranate concentrate to add to the pitcher of water. And then I stir. I stir and stare at the pitcher of water as it spins. I am ridiculously concentrating on the concentrate.
I drank the juice this morning and thought about another circling. "Give thanks to the Lord, His Love endures forever." I can hear Michael W. Smith singing it in my head.
Every thought of the psalm had to be circled, had to be held together, by the only sinew that holds: Give thanks to the Lord, His Love endures forever.
A theologian once said that God teaches us this method of repetition through Scripture with good reason. The human mind is incurably centrifugal, forever flying off on a tangent. It needs to be brought back to the great central truths of the gospel, over and over. Our minds must be made literally to concentrate.
The earth spins, the days circle, so Scripture keeps spinning around the central point because the mind is chronically centrifugal. In a circling world, we keep flying off on tangents.
I need to intentionally con-centrate - to circle again and around again on the central thing.
So none of this ever gets old: giving thanks, giving thanks every day and again, for a thousand things.
This old path never really gets old - its what renews.
Nobody lives Gospel-centered lives, until literally, intentionally con-centrating: circling the mind around and around Christ again.
In the vortex of life, you keep your head above water by literally con-centrating your thinking.
We are only as Christ-centered as our minds our concentric: thoughts circling around Christ - concentrating.
The laundry smells like dirty socks. The sink is full of dishes again.
There are tears over some homework not done.
Give thanks to the Lord, His Love endures - without expiry date, without end - Forever.
All fear is the lie that God's love ends.
Untie that lie.
Untie that strangling lie by circling your life with Truth. Give thanks to the Lord, His Love endures -
it endures laundry, cancer, students, sleepless nights, debt, despair, broken dreams, brokenness -
His Love Endures Forever
Say it again, like a refrain on repeat.
In the whirling, circling, circle thoughts around gratitude to Christ.
Live concentrically.
Go in circles around the right things. Circle around Christ. Concentrate on Him.
I wash off the counter, soak up this ring, this life giving juice. Life tastes better and is lived better when concentrated.
I pull out a pen and begin to write the day's joy
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