Just One Week!

In this week alone, I coached my son Joel’s Little League Baseball Team to win the Dennis Township Minor League Championship. I had all of my children and grandchildren together for a glorious day as we went to the Cape May County Zoo and Morey’s Piers to make some lasting memories. I officiated the wedding of a tremendous young couple with so much promise named Brian and Lauren as they launched their new adventurous life together. And I oversaw the funeral of an awesome woman who left us so shockingly suddenly named Linda Keech. She was just at church and then by that evening she was gone and we didn’t even get to say goodbye. Seven days of a whole host of emotions that my Lord captured and contained in one very humble and fragile combustible human heart and soul! I laughed and cried and cheered and died all in the same day. God, do any of us really ever know how amazingly wondrous this world is while we are so busy living?
We are now in the midst of June, a season of graduations and weddings and new starts and summer ventures. I don’t know how long I have on this planet. Each day is a gift and it should be unwrapped as so. It should not be demanded or taken for granted. I do know that God has given me the freedom to choose and I choose to engage and breathe and dance and sing and love lots while I am able. I do know that I want to stop becoming so vulnerable to the traps and the landmines that attempt to steal, kill and destroy what precious moments that I have been given. I want to excel in the areas that God has so graciously gifted me in. I want to impact and share and communicate to as many as possible as effectively as possible that the secret to life is making sure that you are in a right relationship with the God who made you!
On any given day we need to be very aware of those who really have no other goal but to rain on our parade and stomp on our balloons and criticize rather than fantasize of how fantastic Emerald City can truly be. I love the song from the Broadway Show Wicked, “Defying Gravity.” I really believe that God created us to lots more than just survive. He weeps when we wimp out to settle for much less than what was originally planned within our DNA. I am calling on the Encouragers and the Coaches and the Lovers and the Dreamers and the Artists to do what they do best and that is keep on calling those around them to a much better world than the one that is! You have more power than you think you do. With one smile or random act of kindness, you can literally alter the course of somebody’s destiny today. But if you are too busy consumed within the design of your own little cocoon, you will miss the skywriting on the horizon with God’s assignment for you.
I know that for all the good that I do, I also have failed in so many areas. I know that for every dream that has come true, there have been many that have died on the nightstand. All I know is this: being alive is not as much a right as it is a holy present and I want to be aware of the magic before it becomes a regret of the past! I can’t please everyone around me. I can’t control what God only knows. I can’t make others happy when they are committed to being miserable. But this much I do know, I want to live the life that God has orchestrated just for me. The one that He fearfully and wonderfully composed. I want to be His instrument of sweet soul sounds that cause the hearts of others to wake up and shake up and get the heck out of bed!
Another week has come to an end. I have not been promised this week to come. I have no idea if I will still be around come next weekend. No matter! Ready or not, here I come and nothing is going to hold me back from the days that God has ordained for me. May I live them to their fullest – loving Him and loving others and never forgetting to keep the music turned up nice and loud and when I can! Here comes summer and there goes Rudy!