Thou Mayest open.substack.com/pub/jdbing…

I’m surprised Haaland finished that match. After that second goal, I thought he might go straight to Valhalla.

Once in a while something happens that shakes the world, an event that sticks with you the rest of your life, the kind of moment that years from now your children and grandchildren will ask, “Do you remember where you were when you found out, when you heard they set Balo free?”

Iceland is a realm of magic.

Excellence is not measured by the number of talents we have but by what we do with the talents we are given. + @JoeEhrmann Life isn’t fair. Never has been. Never will be. We’re all dealt a different hand of cards at birth, and we have no say in the matter. Some love what the Dealer gave them. Others would prefer to replace their whole hand, or fold even. But our role is simply to play as best we can the cards we have. People like to talk a lot about privilege these days. Here’s the incalculable privilege we all have – life. We were chosen for an infinitely mysterious reason to be part of the grand adventure of life. How do we atone for this immense privilege? By living as best we can. By turning our talents into skills and using those skills to bless the world. By transforming, day by day, bit by bit, into the best version of ourselves, the one we are most proud to be. That’s success. That’s excellence. That’s living a great life.

The most difficult moments in our lives – the ones we fear and avoid at all costs – are our crucibles. They have the most potential to forge our souls into the shape of Jesus. + John Mark Comer I so often want to skip to the good part. But what if the treasure is found in the trial? What if the good part isn’t the end but the hardship along the way that forms us into the people we want to become? What if our hardest moments are vouchers that if we bring to Jesus for redemption become the greatest prizes of our lives? Dr. Jordan Peterson says, “The magic is in the work you’re avoiding.” I don’t want to miss the magic. I don’t want to try to skip to the good part over and over and find out in the end that I skipped over all the parts that transformed me into someone more like Jesus.

No one becomes human the way Jeremiah was human by posing in a posture of victory. It was his prayers, hidden but persistent, that brought him to the human wholeness and spiritual sensitivity that we want. What we do in secret determines the soundness of who we are in public. + Eugene Peterson Flee from any kind of false faith. Avoid the road of a “religiopath,” one who plays the part but is lost in the performance. Jesus declares such a warning in the New Testament in talking about the Pharisees. When they prayed, it was for show and public spectacle. When they gave, it was to gain earthly honor. Their hearts were empty because they sought fulfillment from the temporary – the esteem of the world. And the worst part Jesus shares is that they got everything they wanted – they sought worthless treasure, and it’s all they found.

“There’s thunder even on the loftiest peaks.” +Seneca In this life no one is immune to hardship. No matter our status or how many digits are in our bank accounts, we’ll never be so prosperous that we’ll avoid pain. Everyone experiences sickness, heartache, confusion, and distress. No one is exempt from suffering. Struggle is egalitarian. It comes for us all. So, we ought not to design our lives with the hope of escaping adversity – we’ll ever strive and ever fail. Perhaps it’s far wiser to build of our lives a shelter that can withstand the storm, build a bunker against the heartbreak so that we can face it when it comes, and still be standing once it’s passed.

“The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.” + C.S. Lewis Belief is built on a foundation of evidence. Faith is a tree rooted in the soil of reason that rises as tall as it can knowing that it’ll never reach the heights of heaven. It stretches its branches upward straining for what it knows it cannot yet hold.

"When the moments come – when we’re afraid, exhausted, or tempted – what choice do we make? Do we abandon our values? Do we give in? Do we accept average performance because that’s what most everyone else accepts? Do we capitulate to the pressure of the moment? Do we give up on our dreams when we’ve been slammed by brutal facts?" +JimCollins Everyone now and again finds themselves walking in the valley. In the darkness. In the doubt. In the doom. In the dread. How do we make it out? What sustains us in that place? What sustains you? What do you cling to when emotion betrays? When your motivation melts? When your plans fall apart and your dream dangles by a thread? When the battle seems lost, what keeps you in the fight? What if fairytales aren’t just fantasy? What if hope isn’t just the sugar-coating that masks the bitter pill of reality? What if good really does overcome? What if the terrible end we fear is our fate is really just our slow start, and happily-ever-after is what awaits us? Psalm 121: "I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth."

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence.” + C.S. Lewis   The far-off country of which Lewis writes is the deep longing for a place we’ve never been. I’ll call it Home. It’s not the home we know, the place where we grew up. We may have happy memories of that place, or sad ones, or none at all. That far-off country is Home in the sense that it’s where we belong, where we’ve always belong.   And anytime those needles of nostalgia pierce us, the memories or feeling they evoke are just dim and rough shadows of the real thing. All of the hopes that fill our hearts don’t look longingly backward – they look ahead to Home. They impatiently await the return to this place we’ve never been but nevertheless belong.   We were created for such a country. And everything this world has to offer us, while lovely in its way, is just a foretaste of what we’ll experience in that far-off country. But it’s not the kingdom, per se, that we seek, but the King, for He is the one who made us, He is the one who knows us, and He is the one calling us Home.

Isaiah 43: "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." A new year is a great time for renewed hope. Yahweh is the God of the new thing. He's the God of finding the lost, breathing life into dead places, shining a light in the dark, and making a way where there is no way. He's up to something -- He's masterminding a conspiracy to save and redeem and restore the captives of this fallen world. That includes me. And you. And maybe you think, "There's no way He's coming to save me! There's no way my story ends happily ever after." Maybe. But just remember His words: "I will make a way."

Go see it — you’ll love it!

😬🐷

Is this The Message translation?

Fair is fair.

I don’t know what he does for a living, but I want to do that.

DC, take notice.