Pushing Away

**Sit quietly, eyes closed and in silence for one minute before reading.**

    Not being able to control something or someone we often push away. Not understanding how to respond to someone with mental illness or physical handicaps we avoid. I am convicted by how often I push others away in fear. I am convicted that I push away and avoid rather than enter into and love.

    I do whatever is the opposite of incarnate. I do not enter in, I pull out. There is wisdom in how all this is done and I recognize each situation is different.

    What I do know about myself is that more often than not I pull out rather than enter in.

    Is there someone you have been pushing away? Might God be calling you to enter in?

**Sit again in silence for as long as is available to you.**

The Mundane

**Sit quietly, eyes closed and in silence for one minute before reading.**

    “Choosing to enter into the mundane with our children, who see playing ponies as anything but ordinary, is a sacrifice of love.”

                                       - Desperate by Sarah Mae and Sally Clarkson

    “Mommy, tell me the story about …” My son loves to ask me to make up stories. It is fun to be in the imaginative process with him yet I wear out so fast. I cannot keep up with his little mind and get weary. I cringe at the word “mundane” in the quote above because it is so superficial. How can we call anything mundane that someone takes great joy and fun in?

    Who am I to judge what is exciting and what is mundane? For me it’s the repetition that gets wearing and there does not have to be much!

    As I consider this very small sacrifice I think about God, who came to earth as a man, Jesus. If anyone made the choice to move from incredibly exciting, fulfilling, joyful to mundane it was God! He came into our world, now that is an act of sacrificial love!!

    This move of love was beautiful and sacrificial – to meet us where we are at, to choose to take on flesh and become like us. In the Incarnation, God chose to sit down on the carpet and play ponies and legos with His children that He loves so dearly.

    How will you respond to the “mundane” today?

**Sit again in silence for as long as is available to you.**