outWORD by Matte Downey

Image from steppingstonefriendswood.com When you go to a financial adviser, they ask you three basic questions in order to discern how best to handle your investments. 1. What is your goal? (retirement, simple and sustainable lifestyle, travel, funds for children's education, etc.) 2. What is your timeline? (5 years, 20 years, 50 years) 3. What is your tolerance for risk? (are you willing to take chances? how do you handle setbacks? volatility?) When we think about investing our lives in the kingdom of God, of living a life of faith, the same kind of questions apply. What do we desire or love? What are we pointing our lives toward? Do we frame things short-term or long-term? What foundation we are laying for future generations? How do we respond to hard times? Do we experience a significant amount of fear and paranoia or are we willing to take risks? Does our perspective take into account the long arc of redemption and grace found in Jesus? When Jesus tells his listener...

It has been quite a week. My school year officially ended last Friday with a bang: a 21-hour day which included a 3 hour exam and a 15-hour creative project. The next night we went jive dancing with some friends and on the way home, blew two tires out on a nasty pothole. Dean's car went into the shop on Monday for new tires and some minor body work. He commandeered my car, so I was without wheels for 4 days. Meanwhile, Dean had a business trip scheduled, so he drove to Vermont, parked my car at the airport, then flew to Memphis to oversee shipping and inventory at the new warehouse location for his company. When he got there, he encountered a bigger mess than he had bargained for. He called me yesterday to tell me he was extending his trip by 3 days. That leaves me in charge of leading the Sunday night church gathering and speaking. On top of that, I have had a house guest for the past 2 weeks who is writing three exams and dealing with some curve balls that life is tossing at he...

My university classes start again tonight and I already had the first conference call for my online course yesterday. Part of what I have to do in two of the classes is blog or journal about my weekly readings, so I hope you don't mind being part of my education, because I will be posting some of those musings here. I also teach/moderate a Wednesday night group where we explore finding God in our everyday lives, so I might occasionally post the thoughts I prepared for that group on here as well. Don't worry, it won't get stuffy and boring and I won't turn into a droning, dry professor (though rest assured, none of my teachers are anywhere near boring). It will still be personal and real, but perhaps on a few more varied topics and issues. As I am inspired in my journey of learning, my hope and prayer is that you may find something that will benefit or encourage or challenge you as well. So, here are some thoughts from yesterday's Wednesday night group. The topic was...

We are away for the weekend, visiting friends in Ontario. I have two papers due early next week, which explains my absence from blogworld as I have been trying to get them done before we took this wee vacation, and I am happy to say that the rough drafts are both done and packed in my backpack, waiting for me to edit them. We had a great home group dinner on Wednesday night, lots of food, good discussion, mulled wine, and of course, some silly dance moves. I got there early to help prepare the food and a few of us started talking about one's purpose in life. One of my friends had been asked the question at work by a colleague, "What is your purpose in life?" and now she wanted to know what other people would have said. Good question. It is easy to give a broad, vague answer and we came up with most of the usual ones: to worship God, to love others, to know God, to be everything I am meant to be, to make this world a better place, etc., but that's pretty easy to say a...

While ironing the small gaggle of wrinkled clothes that had accumulated over the past few days, I watched an episode of Wife Swap earlier this evening. In case you are not a fan of reality tv (though I don't understand how anyone can fail to be mesmerised by the tragedies and joys of others' lives, albeit a carefully orchestrated and edited version of reality), this is not a kinky show with sexual overtones. They simply take two families that are very different, have the wives switch places and assume each other's daily tasks, and then see what drama ensues. The first week is spent living by the rulebook that the resident wife has written to the visiting wife. The second week, the visiting woman gets to introduce a new set of rules, reflecting what she believes is lacking in the current family situation. Can you see the potential for volatile situations yet? Tonight's episode was about one woman who spent most of her time cultivating her art and personal creativit...

There are some things I don't understand in life. Okay, there are a lot of things I don't understand in life. Every day I lack understanding about something and for the most part, I think we all get used to this feeling. We accept odd patterns of behaviour and ways of being because they become familiar, not necessarily because things are as they should be. Dean has been sick for 10 days. It is not a good thing. He was flat on the couch for 2 days and then got a bit better and now has the energy to go to work but not much else. He can't eat much of anything because his digestive system just rejects most food (yes, it comes out either one end or the other in case you must know). It is just some silly stomach virus but it is going on way too long and I don't know why. I don't understand. Yesterday I prayed, "God, if there is some particular purpose that you have in Dean being sick, then we embrace it and co-operate with what you are doing. But if there is no purp...