Category: The Thinking Life

God’s Heart Toward Us

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 2 Comments

One of the things I most love about slowing down to read and think and ponder is how it gives me the bandwidth to notice common themes that pop up again and again. A recent theme has been the love of God for us in Christ.

I saw this several places: in a song by Twila Paris, We All Bow Down

Worship Jesus

For He is love

Unfailing love

He is the Love of God

I saw it again in D.A. Carson’s meditation on Psalm 103:8, The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love,

On the first signs of genuine repentance, he turns from wrath, for the Lord is “slow to anger, abounding in love.” Strict justice would be immediate–an easy thing for Omniscience! The truth is that God “does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities (103:10)

p. 6585, For the Love of God, Volume 2

I saw it multiple times in both the Old and New Testaments,

Sing, O heavens!

Be joyful, O earth!

And break out in singing, O mountains!

For the Lord has comforted His people,

And will have mercy on His afflicted.

God Will Remember Zion

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,

And my Lord has forgotten me.”

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,

And not have compassion on the son of her womb?

Surely they may forget,

Yet I will not forget you.

See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;

Isaiah 49:13-16a

Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth,

Exodus 34:5-6

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

Then as I was listening to the Knowing Faith podcast a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Michael Kruger said,

…God that is presenting Christ as a propitiation…God is basically offering His own Son to be the sacrifice that He Himself demands and so there’s this sense in which no one could say that God is this wrathful deity who’s angry all the time and you’ve got to placate Him with blood. No, this is a God who loves you and is going to give His own Son for you and He’s the One who offers Him. (Episode 121, you can start at where he is talking about propitiation at 27 minutes in but the whole episode is worth listening to)

Most of all, I have seen it in a book I’ve been slowly, slowly reading over the past several months, Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund. While I knew the theology behind what the author was saying in his book, I have found it too easy to forget that, in Christ, God the Father’s heart toward me is one of compassion and mercy, not judgment. This book has turned my heart and mind to the truth of God’s mercy and love for His children.

Filled with quotes from the Puritan writers, Gentle and Lowly returns again and again to who God truly is. Ortlund makes the point that the God of the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament are the same God, the One who loves us with an everlasting love, the One who has engraved us onto His hands, the One who redeems and clothes, sustains and provides for His people.

How easy it is to fall into the trap of thinking that God is angry, especially when we think of the Old Testament. Ortlund writes,

The Christian life, from one angle, is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is, over many decades, fall away, being slowly replaced with God’s own insistence on who he is. This is hard work. It takes a lot of sermons and a lot of suffering to believe that God’s deepest heart is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger.” The fall in Genesis 3 not only sent us into condemnation and exile. The fall also entrenched in our minds dark thoughts of God, thoughts that are only dug out over multiple exposures to the gospel over many years. Perhaps Satan’s greatest victory in your life today is not the sin in which you regularly indulge but the dark thoughts of God’s heart that cause you to go there in the first place and keep you cool toward him in the wake of it.

P. 128, Gentle and Lowly

In fact, before we were born, before God even created Adam, from all eternity the Godhead had already agreed to what theologians call the Covenant of Redemption, which was God’s Plan A all along. R.C. Sproul explains it more fully in this article, but the gist of it is that God the Father sent God the Son into the world to save sinners and that God the Son willingly did so. It wasn’t some last-ditch effort because Adam and Eve messed up. No, God the Father loved us before He created us and had planned to save us from the beginning.

In one of the end chapters, Ortlund talks about our tendency toward “law-ish hearts” being so natural to our sinful selves that we struggle to see God’s lavish heart toward us, just as the Galatians did in Paul’s time. Ortlund writes,

And the Christian life is simply the process of bringing my sense of self, my Identity with a capital “I,” the ego, my swirling internal world of fretful panicky-ness arising out of that gospel deficit, into alignment with the more fundamental truth. The gospel is the invitation to let the heart of Christ calm us into joy, for we’ve already been discovered, included, brought in. We can bring our up-and-down moral performance into subjection to the settled fixedness of what Jesus feels about us.

p. 160, Gentle and Lowly

His heart toward us is one of love and grace, not harsh condemnation because of Jesus. What good news is this!?

I highly recommend this book to all Christians. It’s one that I will go back and re-read often as it reminds me of the thing that I most often forget: God’s magnificent, all-encompassing love for His people. Our beliefs drive our actions so the more this truth sinks into my soul, the more I will be able to live it out in my daily life. And then extend that love and grace to those around me.

Do you believe the Father’s heart is one of compassion and mercy towards you? How could believing that truth change your thoughts and words and actions today?

NaNoWriMo Goal for 2021

~ Joy O'Toole ~ Leave a comment

Four years ago, I attempted a goal for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Since I write nonfiction, not novels, I participated as a “rebel”, which meant I wouldn’t try for 50,000 words but instead would come up with a goal of my own to attempt during the month of November. You can read more about that goal here: Daily Writing and NaNoWriMo

This year, I will again create my own goal that I want to achieve. I wrote about my desire to get back to journaling a few weeks ago and after reading this article by Michael Hyatt, in which he suggested sticking with the habit for 30 days, it occurred to me that November would be the perfect month to work on that habit.

This morning I wrote out my NaNoWriMo goal for 2021:

I will write in my journal for 30 days, every day in the month of November, even if it’s only a few lines, to redevelop that rhythm of daily writing.

One of the things I cover with my writing group every year is that preparation for NaNoWriMo leads to better success in reaching your goal. Following that advice, I’ve chosen a “template” to use. By asking myself the same questions every morning, I won’t have to stare at a blank page, wondering what to write. On busy mornings, perhaps I’ll only choose one question to answer, while on weekend mornings, I’ll have time to answer all eight.

Also, I’ve decided to not limit myself to one particular medium but instead, I will write by hand in my paper journal, on my phone when I’m out, or on my computer, if it’s handy. In other words, my goal here is to capture my thoughts each day in whatever means possible.

Now, this won’t be my only writing since I’m still working on regularly posting here and also working slowly on my book project. That’s one of the reasons I’m not being too perfectionistic about how I get my journal writing done each day.

Will you be participating in NaNoWriMo this year? Do you have a regular journaling habit? I’d love to hear how you fit writing into your day.

Feeding Your Creativity

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 4 Comments
Writing Desk – Pen & Ink drawing by Victor L. Doyle

Earlier this month, I was gathering ideas to share with the writers group at the library. Our topic for August was Feeding Your Creativity, an idea I first read in Wild Words by Nicole Gulotta. During my research, I discovered this great article on creativity based on an old book from 1939. Artists and writers looking for creativity is apparently not a new concept!

The author of the book listed five steps to cultivating creativity:

  1. Gathering raw material
  2. Digesting the material
  3. Unconscious processing
  4. The A-Ha Moment
  5. Idea Meets Reality

As I thought about this five step process, I realized that I follow these steps almost unconsciously when I think about my writing, work on a Bible study, plan my goals for the next quarter, and a host of other creative and thinking work.

Then this morning, I came across this lovely video about Training Your Creative Flow by photographer Shaye Elliott.

In her video, Shaye is talking about Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which I started reading but quit partway through because I never conquered morning pages. I tried so many times on my own and did something similar last winter during a writing class. However, the pain in my hands when I write with a pen for more than a few minutes keeps me, mentally and physically, from maintaining that habit. Julia Cameron’s insistence that it must be pen and paper makes sense to me intellectually and the lovely piece of writing on the beauty in pain that came out of the exercise last winter both keep me thinking about this. But until I conquer the very real mental or emotional barrier of my fear of the pain, I know that I won’t do morning pages.

Consequently, I’ve decided to adapt these ways of capturing creativity to make it work for me where I am right now. Rather than just give up, which has been my tendency, I’ve come to the conclusion that if writing is important to me, and it is, then I have to do what works and stop trying to live someone else’s ideal process.

Here is how I plan to use these steps to feed my creativity:

  1. Raw material – This is not a problem. I read so much and so widely that I’m always gathering raw material. The challenge is to organize it for easier retrieval. I have a system that I’m working on but that is for another post.
  2. Digesting the material – I think this is where the morning pages will come in. Rather than fuss myself about doing it by hand, I’ve decided to just type my thoughts. Perhaps this is not optimal but it’s better than not doing anything at all, a sentiment echoed in this article by a leadership coach for lawyers.
  3. Unconscious processing – This requires silence and solitude, which are hard to find in the world today but not impossible. A combination of weaning myself off of social media, planning in slots of reflective time, and adding in more walks, some of which I will make thinking walks, should give me time for the processing that is crucial to idea generation.
  4. The A-Ha moment – I have a small notebook and/or my phone with me all of the time so that when the ideas hit, I’m ready for them. In the past, I’ve jotted down words and phrases on a slip of paper, dictated my thoughts to Siri as I drove, sent myself an email, added a note to my phone, and scribbled down thoughts for a new direction in my notebook. Writing down ideas as they strike is a discipline that is well worth cultivating for every creative. I wrote more about this in my post A Writer’s Notebook.
  5. Idea meets reality – Make time for regular writing! Two other ideas from Julia Cameron’s book are to have a creative date with yourself every week and to practice your art regularly. For me that looks like having a book on writing that I read for an hour a week, as a minimum, and sitting down every day to write—morning pages, a blog post draft, my journal, a book draft—whatever it is to get the words on paper and develop the discipline of showing up to my art.

Have I perfected this process? Not at all. However, the steps are in place and now I need to walk in them. If I can do it, so can you!

Do you think these five steps to creativity are helpful? Do you write morning pages either by hand or electronically? Please share your practices in the comments so we can all learn to live the creative life together.

Journaling – My Need and Neglect

~ Joy O'Toole ~ Leave a comment

Over the years, I’ve discovered an intense need for keeping a journal. It started in high school and has only grown over the years. When I was fifteen, a journal gave me a place to write down my thoughts, wishes, dreams, and desires that I did not dare share with anyone else. It provided a secret place for bad poetry, prayers, and plans for my future. Crushes on boys at school or church sat next to sincere desires to serve God with all of my heart.

As I grew older, I used my journal to not only keep track of what came out of my heart but also to record my interactions with God. What I read in Scripture, what I heard from sermons and speakers, what I discovered about Him in the books I read, and all of my responses to these things were crammed onto the pages as I learned about who He was and who He created me to be.

Plans for my daily life, goals for upcoming months, multiple lists, commonplace quotes, and things I wanted to remember were jotted down for future reference. My journal was my go-to most days to help me think and plan and dream. It became such an integral part of my intellectual, emotional, and spiritual life that I couldn’t imagine abandoning it.

However, as much of a need as I have for journaling regularly, I’ve noticed that I’ve been neglecting it more and more in the last few years. While I still try to read a good bit each week, I rarely copy down quotes from the books (commonplace). Also, I do a lot less thinking about what I’m reading, comparing it to what I already know, pondering its meaning, and writing about what I think.

Last year, I worked through Life Path: Personal and Spiritual Growth through Journal Writing by poet Luci Shaw with a group of Christian women who also wanted to start or restart journaling. For a time during that study and a bit afterward, I once again filled page after page in my journal, but as COVID retreated somewhat and life began returning to its former busyness, I wrote less and less.

Part of that is just a lack of time for pondering. With a home and family, a full-time job, and a commute, large blocks of time for reading and writing have turned into snatches of time here and there. Writing often falls by the wayside as a result. To be honest, the difficulty in finding time is also due to the great amount of knowledge at our fingertips, the glut of which often keeps me taking in too much and not thinking about it enough.

However, this summer I have been deliberately setting up systems for tracking my time and activities and for carving out a deeper life, in which I can lose myself once again in the written words I used to revel in. My hope is that my neglect of journaling will cease, that I will pick up my pen regularly to mull over life and ideas, and that my musings will lead to a fuller, richer life.

Do you make time for journaling? How do you make it a priority? Please share any tips you have below!

Stopping to Listen

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 4 Comments
Morning sun

Amid the difficulties and trials of the pandemic this past year, at least one good thing has emerged: the time to stop and listen. In our pre-pandemic busyness, it was easy to dash ahead with recreation, work, and duties and never pause to notice the little things that make up our days. Several years ago, a reporter experimented with our preoccupation with rushing through our day when he set Joshua Bell up as a violinist in a busy subway station. Hardly anyone stopped to listen! The beauty of his playing was lost amid the urgent.

But these days, most of us do have the margin in our lives to pause, and as we do, we notice the world around us and listen to the background noise of our lives. This noticing and listening require us to still our hearts, to pay attention, and to turn off the incessant background hum of sound, but the rewards are well worth it.

Here are some of the things I am noticing and listening to right now:

  • the change in light as the sun rises earlier and earlier each day
  • bird song as it greets each morning with joy
  • weeds starting to grow again even though my plants are still mostly dormant
  • wind blowing through the trees
  • connections between ideas that pop up in books and conversation throughout the day
  • the dialog between my soul and God in the early morning hours
  • the way my cat focuses all of his attention every morning on the spot where the birds hang out
  • the sound of silence, heavy and soft, in which I can almost hear my heart beating
  • rays of light that fall across my bed each morning as I make it up for the day
  • how my heart lies quiet as I stop and stare and wonder, instead of rushing on
  • the soundtrack in my neighborhood—dogs barking, birds singing, leaves rustling—as I walk outside after lunch
  • feeling the sunshine warm on my skin when I go outside
  • seeing the first blades of green thrusting up where my tiger lilies grow
  • hearing words that my husband does not say in between the ones he verbalizes

Stop…listen…notice…reflect. These are gifts from the pandemic that came in the midst of the hardship, and I am thankful that I have cut out enough of the busyness to experience them.

What are you noticing and listening to today?

How To Make Time for Reading

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 2 Comments
Books I’m currently reading with my reading journal

As part of my planning and organization, I purposely set up time for reading. Planning experts talk about the Eisenhower Grid, which divides things into four categories: urgent and important, urgent and non-important; non-urgent and important; and non-urgent and non-important. I will unpack those more in a future blog post, but for most of us, reading tends to falls into the category of non-urgent and important.

Why is this so? For one thing reading doesn’t have a deadline, unless you are a student or have to read something for work. Books just sit quietly on their shelves and while passing them by might make you feel guilty for a moment, they aren’t going to jump down and tackle you. If you’re not in school, no teacher is going to test you on that book you want to read. Even if you add it to your Goodreads “Currently Reading” list, it’s unlikely that anyone will say something if it lingers there for months, or you quietly move it back on the To Read shelf. I know this because I have done that more than once, and no one has ever asked me about it.

So, while reading is not usually urgent, it is important, because reading allows you to grow as a person by learning new things. Putting yourself in another place or another person’s shoes or another time helps you develop compassion and insight. Reading expands your mind and your heart.

Therefore, if reading is important but it doesn’t reach out and grab you, it’s up to you to make time for it. The easiest way to make sure I have regular time for books and article is to schedule it into my regular rhythms and routines.

Morning is set aside for devotional and intellectual study since that’s when my mind is most able to chew on meaty topics. By lunch time, I’m ready for some good nonfiction or serious fiction, which I read while I eat or listen to while walking. By the time evening rolls around, my mind is done for the day, and often I’m only able to read easier fiction, light essays, or a fun memoir.

I like to read articles from magazines and blogs but don’t have time for those during the work week. Several years ago, I discovered Instapaper, which allows me to gather articles together and then send them in batches to my kindle. Once a week, usually on the weekend, I sit down with a batch or two of articles and read through them. Some I skim quickly while others are worth thinking more deeply about. The beauty of having them converted to kindle documents is that I can highlight or make notes on points I want to study further or use in my future writing.

Other things I consider are my energy, emotions, and the season of the year. After considering the time of day, I also consider whether it’s the beginning of the week and/or the weekend when I have more energy. If things in my life are difficult, I will sometimes read for escape. For instance, I went on a murder mystery binge during the pandemic. Mysteries are my favorite genre and rereading old favorites was especially helpful when I didn’t want to think about the outside world for a couple of hours. My reading also tends to follow the seasons of the year—reflective reading and rereading in winter, more challenging reading in spring and fall, and mostly fun reading in the summer.

A key part of making time for books is knowing what I’m going to read next. I like to have several books lined up, some light and some heavier reading, so that when I finish a book, I don’t have to hunt around for another. That hunting tends to lead me down rabbit trails on the internet, and I lose all of my reading time to deciding what I’m in the mood for. If I have several good titles of varying difficulty and genre already chosen, I can almost always just pick one up and jump right in.

I get my ideas for titles to read next from what’s new at the library, book blogs and podcasts, and suggestions from friends and fellow librarians. Since part of my job is to read about books, I often have more books in mind than I can possibly read. An endless to-be-read list is one way to ensure I always have my next book waiting for me to pick it up.

Planning ahead and arranging my time and energy allows me to establish rhythms of reading into my days and weeks. How do you fit reading into your life? Please share in the comments.

Reading in 2021

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 4 Comments
February Choices. Not pictured: Wintering by Katherine May, an ebook.

One of my goals for 2021 is to be more intentional in my reading. Last year, along with many others, I did a lot of comfort reading. That was fine, and I don’t regret it, but there are areas in which I’d like to grow in my reading life. Growth will only occur if I’m deliberate since I’d much rather just pick up one more murder mystery.

One thing that helped a lot in my planning was listening to Episode 265 of the What Should I Read Next podcast. Anne’s guest Laura Tremaine had ten questions to ask about your reading life. I journaled through these questions and came up with some ideas on how I wanted to approach my reading in 2021.

Also, I downloaded the Literary Life podcast 19 in 2021 reading challenge and the Modern Mrs. Darcy reading challenge. Since the MMD challenge was more of a worksheet on how you want your reading life to look, I was able to combine the two challenges to give me a good list of areas in which to read this year.

Here are the categories I hope to tackle in 2021. These include both challenges plus some work reading:

  • Poetry – They suggested an anthology, of which I own several. Normally I don’t read one straight through but dip in and out.
  • Letters – These would be real-life letters, which I love to read. I may combine this category with the next one and read the last book of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s letters that I’ve owned for several years but not yet read.
  • A book from my To-Be-Read stack – Lots to choose from here!
  • Old Books – My cut off is anything pre-1950
  • A Shakespeare play – I’ve read about three fourths of his plays and plan to read one new to me.
  • A book that requires jumping a hurdle. Either because it’s difficult to read or long or I’m avoiding it for some reason.
  • A book I started but never finished – There are several possibilities for this category.
  • Something Russian – Perhaps I should combine the previous category with this one and finally finish Anna Karenina!
  • Biography and Memoir – This is one of my favorite categories so I’ll have fun choosing a book for this one.
  • Something Local – I can read a book set in my area or by a local author. Since I work with the local authors at my library, I have many possibilities.
  • Reading Outside My Comfort Zone – This is a work category and part of the challenge.
  • Travel Books – I have a couple on my shelves that I’ve been meaning to read.
  • A Re-Read – I re-read regularly so this will be easy.
  • A Favorite Topic – I could choose several areas here–writing, genealogy, cooking, needlework, English history, or theology.
  • Focusing on an author – The idea is to read three or more books by the same author. I hope to choose a non-mystery author to stretch me.
  • Multicultural/#OwnVoices novel or memoir – This is for work and part of the challenge – I completed this one by reading The Beauty in Breaking by Michele Harper.
  • Theology and Christian Living – At least two of each this year.
  • A Winter Reading Challenge badge – Our library has a winter reading challenge each year, and you can earn badges by reading books in different categories. I earned the Surviving Winter Challenge by reading Snow by John Banville, A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow, and Crossed Skis by Carol Carnac.

My January reading was very satisfying in comfort although not so much in the challenge. I read three nonfiction, one of which was poetry, fifteen fiction books, and one children’s book. Of the fiction, only three weren’t mysteries. As much as I love mysteries, I need to be more adventurous in my reading.

I re-read several Hercule Poirot novels, which could count in the rereading category as well as the focus on a single author category, but they aren’t really stretching my reading life so I won’t count them toward the challenge.
Waiting on the Word was poetry and devotional, but since I started it in December, I don’t plan to count it on this list. Also, I finally finished Union with Christ, which I started last year, too, so I’m not counting it either.
Business as Usual by Jane Oliver was a delightful novel in letters. It doesn’t count for the challenge since that’s supposed to be real life letters, but it was so wonderful that I don’t care. I loved every second of it and will most likely read it again in the near future.

February is off to a better start as I intentionally chose books to read and am setting aside time daily to make progress in them—theology, nonfiction, and a book on literature. I’d like to add a book on writing and some poetry. I’ve almost decided which poetry anthology to read. In the meantime, I’m listening to a podcast on poetry and one on writing.

Do you plan to read intentionally in 2021? What’s the best book you read in January?

January Reading and Listening

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 2 Comments

According to the weather report, we may be getting our first snow since Christmas Day. I love watching the snow fall and feeling cozy with a cup of tea. I always feel a bit more relaxed and ready to take time for reading and reflection.

Here are some interesting things I read and listened to this month:

Reading

3 Contemporary Temptations Old Books Will Help You Face – Alan Jacob’s new book was already on my to-read list this year so I appreciated this article.

Why We Should Pray Like the Puritans (Even if We Don’t Sound Like Them) – ...they took God at his Word, and they valued the truth of Scripture. They counted the cost, and they prayed about everything in their lives with a fiery passion.

8 Tips for Reading Poetry – Working with local poets at the library has inspired me to read more poetry. This article has good ideas on how to do it.

Join Us to Read for 21 Minutes Every Day in 2021 – Gretchen Rubin has been a favorite author of mine since I first read The Happiness Project. She’s got some great ideas on adding more reading time to your life.

Reformation Women: Giulia Gonzaga – I had never heard of Giulia before reading this article. I love reading about how women in history loved and served God well.

Knowing God’s Word from the Inside and Out
We know that God’s Word has saturated our lives when it has overflown into our actions.

Why Is It So Hard to Think?
The reason deep thinking requires time and space is because deep thinking is work. It takes energy to sift through thoughts and put them in some kind of order, spring cleaning the attic at the top of my body, forcing my way through cobwebs and unexpected memorabilia to stay on task.

Spiritual Disciplines for Dark Days – Five things we can do when we face difficulties, large and small.

How to Go Deep Into Bible Study without Getting Lost – Helpful article on studying Scripture without losing the thread of the main story of His grace.

Cancelling Chaucer – Apparently he’s no longer relevant for today’s students although this poet disagrees. Let’s hope that wiser heads will prevail and old books will be added back into the learning of our young people.

Winter Trees – I have a fondness for trees in the winter time, stark against the sky, and my favorite movement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is Winter, but there’s no doubt that winter can be hard. Here’s a bit of help to make it through until spring.

Listening

Literary Life podcast – Why Read Old Books? – Can you tell this is a favorite theme of mine?

The Stories Between Us podcast – This new-to-me podcast is delightful. A husband and wife, both writers, talk together on the writing life with wisdom and compassion and fun. I’m currently working through the back episodes and have enjoyed every one.

The Well Read Poem podcast – This new podcast is perfect for those of us wanting to add more poetry to our lives. Thomas Banks not only loves poetry, he understands it and can explain the mystery behind the words. Also, he reads beautifully! I highly recommend this one.

Great Hacks, Tips, Tools, and Suggestions About How to #Read21in21 – The podcast to accompany the article above. There’s a list of bookish podcasts to listen to, including two of my favorites: The Literary Life and What Should I Read Next?

Although his podcasts are LONG, I still listen to Cal Newport’s The Deep Life regularly. Recently, he has started doing a deep dive on a specific topic at the beginning of each episode. His first topic, The Deep Reset, was very helpful for those of us wanting to add in more depth to our work and life. At some point, I believe he will string these all together into a single video. In the meantime, if you listen to the first several minutes of each of these podcast episodes, you can hear the whole thing: Episodes 49, 51, 53, 55, and 57.

Last year, my husband and I consolidated our music app subscriptions to one: Apple Music. However, I wasn’t thrilled at how hard it was to find good classical music with full pieces all together, not jumbled up in classical-lite playlists. Enter Concertino, a free app that I now have on my phone and my computer. I logged in with my Apple account and can choose any composer, genre, or time period. I can listen to a specific piece of music or set up a radio station. I am loving it and now I’m loving Apple music, too.

I hope you find these articles, podcasts, and app useful. If one of them is especially helpful to you right now, please share in the comments.

Reflecting on a Word

~ Joy O'Toole ~ Leave a comment

In 2019, I purchased a goal planner, which included a process of setting goals and choosing a single word to focus on during the year. I was intrigued and chose the word, reflect. I placed it on a card on my desk and over the year, I did think about what that meant in my life and how it was working itself out.

Last year, I decided to try the word of the year again. I chose a word, wrote it down, and then, at some point, lost the card with the word. It made so little impression on me that I can’t even remember the word I chose.

With such an abysmal failure with the word of the year, I had decided to skip it in 2021. I have plenty of intentions for my year and don’t really need that single focus. Or, at least, I didn’t think I did until the last week in December. A friend posted a discussion topic on a forum I’m part of and asked if we could discuss choosing a word of the year. I confessed what had happened in 2020 with my now lost word and that I didn’t think I would choose a word this year.

But I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind. In my desire to improve my prayer life and draw closer to the Lord, one thing I am learning to do is to stop and listen, to notice when I see or hear patterns or trends in my reading, thinking, sermons, friends’ counsel, etc. Over that last week in December, I started noticing the theme of rest coming up over and over. That noticing caused me to stop and think about what rest might mean for me.

Anyone who has known me for any length of time probably has picked up that I am a planner. I like to have my ducks in a row, to know what is happening throughout a day, a week, a month. I track progress I make in several areas of my life. In order to best use my time, I have built structures into my life to help me stay on track with intentions and goals.

However, as I have been pursuing a deeper relationship with the Lord this past year, I had added regular Bible reading and study, regular prayer times, and other means of grace, but I knew something was blocking me going further. As I pondered the idea of “rest”, I began to realize that in the good and godly pursuit of knowing Christ more and drawing closer to Him, I was striving in my own strength to do it. Instead of resting in my union with Him and allowing His life and power to pour through me, I was trying to make myself fruitful. To use an analogy from Rankin Wilbourne’s book Union with Christ, I was frantically try to blow the wind on my own sail to live the Christian life.

I saw the idea of rest in the study of Matthew I’m doing with friends at church. I saw the idea of rest in this book I’m reading on union with Christ. We sang the hymn Jesus I am Resting, Resting in church the last Sunday of December. Rest was everywhere I looked when I started paying attention.

Listening is not my strong suit but even I couldn’t miss the fact that the Lord was telling me something. I didn’t need to strive and do a bunch of things to draw close to Him. In fact, all of that doing was possibly getting in the way. Instead, He desires me to rest in Christ, to know the truth of the gospel—that Christ became the wisdom from God, the righteousness, sanctification, and redemption for us. As we rest in Him, His life flows through us and we are fruitful as a result of that life, not as a result of our own work.

I have been a Christian for many years and I know these truths in my head, but I keep having to go back and work them out in my life. I have been saved by grace and I walk by grace but again and again, I need to learn what that looks like. Every time I want to go deeper with God, I have to see what that grace looks like in my day to day life in a new way.

After all this thinking, I ended up choosing a word for 2021: REST. I have written it down in my journal, on that forum with friends, and placed it in several places so I can’t forget it. This year, I will once again learn what it means to rest in Christ.

Do you choose a word to focus on each year? What have you chosen for 2021? Please share in the comments so we can encourage each other in our growth this year.

January is For Reflection

~ Joy O'Toole ~ 4 Comments

You will see the theme of reflection throughout my January posts. Last week, I mused about my reading life in 2020. Today I want to focus on using these first weeks of the new year to think and set my intentions and priorities.

I started using the first few weeks of January for reflection after reading an article in the old Victoria magazine back in the 1990s. Each January, the magazine would print a “winter journal”, focusing on different topics about the season. One year, there was an article which talked about using the quiet winter months for reflection and thought. This resonated with me, and I have viewed January as a time for thinking about the new year ever since.

Years ago, I chose September as my calendar start since it coincides with the start of school and many activities after summer vacations are done. This crisp season seems right for jumping into a new calendar.

January, on the other hand, is the time that I stop and think about priorities, values important to me, and intentions. It’s a quiet month. The holidays and their busyness are over. Often, the weather is more conducive to staying inside with a hot cup of tea than for gardening or taking walks. Even the trees are quiet with their leaves long gone and their branches stark against the sky. Birds and animals are asleep or slow this month. Even my garden is asleep, sometimes under a coverlet of snow.

So I take my direction from the rest of nature and become still inside. What is going to be important to me this year? What do I want my life to look like? How will I focus my reading? My writing? My use of time and energy?

As I ask myself these questions, slowly ideas form in my mind as to where I want to focus. I write down these big ideas, from which I will derive the quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily intentions that land in my planner.

Laura Vanderkam, a time management expert that I particularly admire, often talks about the importance of being intentional in using your time. There are millions of things we can choose, but we have a limited amount of time. How we want our life to look, things we want to accomplish, priorities in our spiritual, physical, emotional, and intellectual lives that we want to set–all of these are the things we use to choose how to spend our time.

I will spend the next few weeks, curled up in a comfy chair in my bookroom with pen and paper in hand, reflecting on my progress over the last year and creating or sustaining the intentions for this upcoming year. This will help me to know if I used the time I have been given wisely the next time January rolls around again.

Do you have a specific time to set your goals or intentions? Are you intentional in your use of time? I’d love to hear about your choices in the comments below.