Yesterday, our home was filled to the brim with just plain fun. It feels like it has been all week.

At house church on Thursday, after a short time of worship and sharing, the group decided to have a fun night just being together. So we all gathered around our dining room table, all ten of us, and played the loudest, rowdiest game of Catchphrase I have ever played.

Yesterday, we had plans for people to come over for dinner. So Paul stopped in during his motorcycle ride. We called my friend Emily. Kate was on her way from out of town. And little brother-in-law Tyler brought fried potatos from Momma H. And we all cooked together, prayed together, ate together, laughed so hard together, told jokes together, watched Cody and Tyler do magic tricks together, cleaned up together, and were just….together, all evening.

During times like that, I can’t stop smiling. Because our home has become this bubbly place where friends feel welcome all the time and where all of our friends learn to love each other. In some ways, it feels like my little purpose…to provide yummy meals and to offer our clean and comfy home as a place for family and friends to gather.

I know sometimes Cody and I still feel we should be living in the inner city…or even in another country doing more tangible forms of goodwill. And someday we probably will. But right now, while we are figuring things out, we would be doing a disservice to God by wasting our time and resources which we are hugely blessed with right now. The future will come at the proper time. And it has enough worries of its own.

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered a second when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.” [the alchemist told the boy]

“Every second of the serach is an encounter with God,” the boy told his heart. “When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I’ve known that every hour was a part of the dream that I would fin dit. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I’ve discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve.”