SEPTEMBER 5, 2026

 “God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. This is what it means to be created in the image of God.” 

― John Piper

PROVERBS 7-8

32“Now then, my children, listen to me;

blessed are those who keep my ways.

33Listen to my instruction and be wise;

do not disregard it.

34Blessed are those who listen to me,

watching daily at my doors,

waiting at my doorway.

35For those who find me find life

and receive favor from the Lord.

36But those who fail to find me harm themselves;

all who hate me love death.” (8:32-36)

1 CORINTHIANS 14:21-40

 24But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, 25as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!”

JOURNAL 

This life is incredibly short. Whether I live ten more years or fifty, my time here is only a moment in the enormous span of eternity. I have always hated endings, whether it is the end of a vacation, a season, a relationship, or ultimately a life. But endings are woven into existence. Seasons end so new ones can begin, and eventually my time here will end too. I don't say that morbidly. Increasingly, I see it as a call to wake up. I don't want to waste a single minute of the life I have been given.

But I am beginning to understand that not wasting my life does not mean frantically accomplishing more. In fact, that could become another way of wasting it. If God is love, and love is the highest purpose of my life, then the question is how fully I can inhabit the time God gives me and use it to love, grow, create, serve, and help others grow. John Piper's words resonate with me because perhaps that is what being made in God's image ultimately means: living in such a way that my particular life points beyond itself toward the goodness, beauty, power, and love of the One who gave it to me.

That changes my understanding of faith. Faith is not a way to manipulate God into making my life easier. It is relationship with the Creator so that I can become fully alive during the brief time I am here. Proverbs says, “Those who find me find life.” Jesus says not to spend today consumed with tomorrow, but to seek God's Kingdom first. Paul describes a community living in such a way that someone encountering them would say, “God is really among you!” Maybe that is what I want my life to say too. Not because I preached it constantly, but because something about the way I loved, taught, coached, led, created, forgave, encouraged, and lived made God's presence visible.

I have wasted too much time imagining some future version of life where everything is finally right. More money. More success. Fewer problems. Greater certainty. But there will always be another problem, another uncertainty, another ending somewhere ahead. Meanwhile, this is my life. Today is not preparation for my life. Today is my life. The people in front of me are the people I have been given to love. The problems in front of me are opportunities to grow. The gifts I possess are the gifts I have been given to use. This moment is the only place where I can actually meet God.

And I am grateful because my life is not over. I still have today. I can love my family. I can love Marci. I can teach a child, coach a player, encourage someone who is struggling, create something meaningful, solve a problem, forgive someone, make a phone call, listen, laugh, pray, notice beauty, and simply be present. None of those moments are insignificant if they are lived in love.

Maybe “seek first His Kingdom” is ultimately an invitation to stop postponing life. Stop waiting for circumstances to become perfect. Stop allowing fear of tomorrow or regret over yesterday to steal today. Choose God. Own the gifts He gave me. Live the mission. Love the people in front of me. And be completely present for this extraordinary, temporary gift of being alive.

Someday my last day will come. Until then, I don't want to waste my life worrying about when it will end. I want to use every day I am given becoming more capable of love and giving that love away. If I can do that, then however long or short my time here ultimately proves to be, I will have truly lived it.

31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

MATTHEW 6:31-34

SEPTEMBER 4, 2026

 “Lord, when I feel that what I'm doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.” 

― Brennan Manning, Souvenirs of Solitude: Finding Rest in Abba's Embrace

PROVERBS 5-6

20My son, keep your father’s command

and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.

21Bind them always on your heart;

fasten them around your neck.

22When you walk, they will guide you;

when you sleep, they will watch over you;

when you awake, they will speak to you.

23For this command is a lamp,

this teaching is a light,

and correction and instruction

are the way to life (6:20-23)

1 CORINTHIANS 14:1-20

1Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit...

JOURNAL 

“Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit.” The more I think about this simple statement, the more it seems to bring together so much of what I have been learning. If God is love, then to follow the way of love is ultimately to follow God. And if, as M. Scott Peck describes it, love is the willingness to extend myself for my own spiritual growth or the growth of another, then perhaps this is the true purpose underneath everything else I do.

This also changes how I think about my gifts. I have spent too much time looking at what I lack, comparing myself to others, or measuring myself by outcomes. But God did not create me to be someone else. As Brennan Manning writes, no one else can do exactly what God has placed me here to do in exactly the way I can do it. My personality, experiences, abilities, passions, relationships, successes, failures, and even the things I have learned through suffering have created a life that is uniquely mine. My responsibility is not to wish for another person's gifts, but to recognize, develop, and offer my own.

Maybe that is what it means to “eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit.” It is not seeking gifts so that I can become important. It is asking God to increase my capacity to love and serve through the particular person He created me to be. My teaching, coaching, creating, leading, encouraging, solving problems, being a husband, father, friend, and simply being present with another person can all become expressions of love. The significance is not necessarily in the size of what I accomplish, but in the love with which I do it and the growth it produces in myself and others.

This brings me back to three things God has continually pressed upon my heart: choose my God, own my talent, and live my mission. I will worship something, so choose God. I have been uniquely given certain gifts, so own them rather than compare them. And then use those gifts for their highest purpose, to love, build, restore, and help others grow.

Jesus made the mission incredibly simple: love God with everything I have and love my neighbor as myself. Maybe I have spent too much time making purpose more complicated than it really is. I do not have to control tomorrow or prove the significance of my life through some extraordinary accomplishment. I simply have to trust God, develop what He has placed within me, and use it to love the people in front of me today.

Perhaps that is the new definition of achievement I am beginning to understand. Did I receive God's love? Did I become more fully the person He created me to be? And did I use that person to help someone else grow? If I can live increasingly that way, then even the seemingly insignificant moments become sacred. They become the particular way that God's love moves through the particular life He gave me.

28One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

29“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.^e 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’^f 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^g There is no commandment greater than these.”

MARK 12:28-31

SEPTEMBER 3, 2026

   “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.” 

― Mahatma Gandhi

PROVERBS 3-4

5Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

6in all your ways submit to him,

and he will make your paths straight. (3:5-6)

1 CORINTHIANS 13

1If I speak in the tongues^a of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^b but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

JOURNAL 

The more I think about love, the more I realize how radically different it is from the way I have often measured my life. M. Scott Peck defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” I love that definition because love is not primarily a feeling. It is an act of the will. It is choosing to move beyond comfort, ego, fear, and self-interest for the genuine good and growth of another person, while also continuing to grow myself.

When I put Peck’s definition beside 1 Corinthians 13, I see something even deeper. Paul strips away almost every other measurement of achievement. Knowledge, talent, faith, generosity, sacrifice, accomplishment, even extraordinary spiritual gifts ultimately amount to nothing without love. “If I do not have love, I am nothing.” That completely changes the scoreboard. I have spent so much of my life measuring achievement by outcomes. Did I win? Did I succeed? Did I accomplish what I set out to do? Did people respect what I built? None of those things are necessarily wrong. Excellence, discipline, growth, and achievement matter. But perhaps there is a much greater question: Did I love?

What would my life look like if love became my primary definition of achievement? Maybe the success of a day would not ultimately be determined by how much I accomplished, but by how much I loved while accomplishing it. Did my students become better because I taught them? Did my players become stronger human beings because I coached them? Did my family feel valued because I was present? Did the people around me grow because I encouraged, challenged, forgave, listened, served, and believed in them? And through all of it, did I become more patient, courageous, truthful, disciplined, and loving myself?

The more I consider Peck’s definition, the more it sounds like God. Scripture does not merely say that God has love. It says that God is love. God creates, nurtures, teaches, disciplines, forgives, gives freedom, and continually calls us toward growth. Maybe that is why Proverbs tells me to trust Him rather than my own understanding. God’s love is concerned with something much greater than my immediate comfort or the particular outcome I think I need.

This changes surrender for me. Trusting God does not mean becoming passive. I can work, prepare, compete, teach, coach, create, solve problems, and pursue excellence. But those things no longer have to determine my worth. Instead, they become opportunities to love. Achievement becomes the vehicle rather than the destination. The question becomes not simply, What did I accomplish? but What did I love into existence?

Maybe that is the highest achievement of a human life: learning to love. If God truly is love, then every time my capacity to love expands, I am becoming more like Him. Perhaps the purpose underneath every other purpose is simply to receive God’s love so completely that I become increasingly capable of giving it away. At the end of each day, maybe the scoreboard can become beautifully simple: Did I love? Did I help someone grow? Did I become more capable of love myself? If the answer is yes, then regardless of the outcome, something eternal was accomplished.

3Let love and faithfulness never leave you;

bind them around your neck,

write them on the tablet of your heart.

4Then you will win favor and a good name

in the sight of God and man.

- Proverbs 3:3-4

SEPTEMBER 2, 2026

 “At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche

PROVERBS 1-2

8Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction

and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.

9They are a garland to grace your head

and a chain to adorn your neck. (1:8-9)

1 CORINTHIANS 12

12Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by^c one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

JOURNAL 

The more I teach science, the more compelling I find the mystery of simply being human. The human body is made of tens of trillions of cells, each carrying out its own work, yet somehow they cooperate to form one living person. But even that barely touches the mystery. Out of all the people who have ever lived, there has never been another me, and there will never be another me. The same is true of every person I encounter. Nietzsche recognized something profound when he wrote that every person knows at some level that he is “a unique being, only once on this earth.” We are each this extraordinary combination of body, mind, personality, experience, gifts, relationships, memories, hopes, fears, and consciousness that has never existed in precisely this form before and never will again.

The older I get, the harder it is for me to look at that reality and believe it is merely accidental. Science can describe the cells, the DNA, the organs, and the systems. It can explain mechanisms with astonishing precision. But there remains something beyond mechanism. Why does all of it come together into a person? Why this particular person? Why do I experience myself as “me,” while every other person experiences an equally singular existence? There is something almost overwhelming about the diversity of humanity and yet the unity underneath it. Billions of utterly unique people, all sharing the same fundamental human design.

That is why Paul's description of the body in 1 Corinthians 12 becomes more profound to me the more I think about it. “The body is not made up of one part but of many.” That is true biologically, but it is also true spiritually. God does not seem interested in sameness. Creation itself seems to proclaim diversity within unity. Different cells form one body. Different organs form one person. Different personalities, abilities, experiences, and gifts form families, communities, and ultimately the body of Christ. Our differences are not flaws in the design. They are part of the design.

That changes how I want to see other people, and it changes how I want to see myself. I do not have to measure another person's weaknesses against my strengths, nor my weaknesses against someone else's strengths. I can recognize that God has given each of us something particular to contribute. Even my parents' instruction, the experiences that shaped me, the people I have loved, the mistakes I have made, and the gifts I have been given have all become threads in a life that belongs uniquely to me. Proverbs describes a father's instruction and a mother's teaching as something of beauty and honor. Even what we receive from others becomes woven into the person we are becoming.

And perhaps that is what I find most compelling. I am not merely one more interchangeable human being among billions. Neither is anyone else. Each person is an unrepeatable expression of humanity, astonishingly complex on the inside and uniquely situated within something much larger than himself. The cells belong to the body, the parts belong to one another, and we belong to something greater than ourselves.

I cannot prove God by simply pointing to the complexity of a cell or the uniqueness of a personality. But when I stand back and consider the whole picture, God becomes increasingly difficult for me to dismiss. There is an order, creativity, unity, and almost unimaginable diversity to existence. Science helps me understand how much of it works, but instead of diminishing my faith, that understanding deepens my wonder. The more I learn, the more remarkable the mystery becomes.

Maybe that is part of what Paul was revealing long before we understood cells, DNA, or biological systems: many parts, one body. Diversity and unity existing together. Each part necessary. Each part belonging. Each person unique.

There will never be another me. There will never be another you. And perhaps the greatest response to that realization is not pride, but gratitude. I have been given this particular life, these particular gifts, and this particular place in the body for a reason. My task is not to become someone else. It is to become fully who God created me to be and then offer that life back to Him in service to the whole.

But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

1 CORINTHIANS 12:24-27

SEPTEMBER 1, 2026

   “Ted Engstrom insightfully writes: “Cripple him, and you have a Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington. Raise him in abject poverty and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes Franklin Roosevelt. Burn him so severely that the doctors say he'll never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham -- who set the world's one mile record in 1934. Deafen him and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven. Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Marian Anderson, a George Washington Carver. Call him a slow learner, "retarded," and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.” 

― Charles R. Swindoll, The Quest for Character/Improving Your serve/Strengthening Your Grip

PSALM 148-150

4For the Lord takes delight in his people;

he crowns the humble with victory.

5Let his faithful people rejoice in this honor

and sing for joy on their beds. (149:4-5 )

1 CORINTHIANS 11:16-34

23For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 

JOURNAL 

The more I think about M. Scott Peck’s discussion of grace in The Road Less Traveled, the more amazing it becomes. We spend so much of life looking for formulas. If I exercise, eat right, prepare, work hard, pray, make good decisions, and discipline myself, then surely I can produce the outcome I want. All of those things matter, and much of Peck’s book is about discipline and personal responsibility. But then he comes to grace, and grace reminds us that the formula is never complete.

There is simply so much we cannot explain. The human body can be unbelievably resilient. Bones heal, wounds close, muscles rebuild, and even the brain can sometimes create new pathways after tremendous injury. Yet that same body can be incredibly vulnerable. One person survives something that seemingly should have killed him while another is devastated by something that appeared relatively minor. One person emerges from terrible suffering stronger, wiser, and more loving, while another struggles to recover. We can explain parts of this through biology, genetics, psychology, medicine, environment, and neuroplasticity, but eventually we reach the edge of our understanding.

And maybe that is where grace begins.

Peck describes grace as something operating beyond our conscious will that seems to encourage human beings toward growth, healing, and spiritual development. The stories Ted Engstrom tells of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Beethoven, Einstein, and so many others remind me of this. Their suffering did not guarantee greatness, because there is no formula saying adversity plus perseverance equals victory. Rather, there seems to be something mysterious within life that can transform weakness into strength, suffering into meaning, and brokenness into something beautiful.

I call that mystery. God.

This does not make discipline less important. It puts discipline in its proper place. I am still called to work, prepare, solve problems, care for my body, love people, pursue excellence, and swing the hammer. But I cannot command the rock to break. I can participate fully in life without pretending that I control it.

Maybe that is also the secret to living in the present. I don't have to understand tomorrow or guarantee an outcome. I am responsible for what is in front of me today. I can work today, love today, serve today, forgive today, and trust God today. Then I can surrender everything beyond that.

There are simply too many things about existence that I cannot explain: the resilience and vulnerability of our bodies, the adaptability of our brains, consciousness, courage, love, healing, suffering, and transformation. Science can explain many of the mechanisms, but every answer seems eventually to lead to another question. At some point I arrive at mystery.

Peck calls it grace. I call it God.

Perhaps faith is becoming comfortable standing at the edge of what I can understand and no longer needing to see beyond it. I do my part faithfully and surrender the rest. 

3“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4Blessed are those who mourn,

for they will be comforted.

5Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth.

6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

for they will be filled.

7Blessed are the merciful,

for they will be shown mercy.

8Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they will see God.

9Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.

10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

MATTHEW 5:3-10