How Are We Spending Our Time?

Heidi here. I have felt so convicted lately of how I spend my time. You see, I've gotten to know Kara Tippetts through her Mundane Faithfulness Facebook page. Since she blogs daily and receives likes in the hundreds and sometimes thousands, a day doesn't go by without seeing a blog post or a status update from her on my Facebook timeline. Kara is amazing. She's also dying. But in such a loving and graceful and God-honoring way. She personifies Romans 12:1 to a tee.

If you aren't familiar with Kara, here is a blurb from world magazine:
      Kara Tippetts and her husband, Jason, have a lot going for them, including four beautiful children and a thriving new church that Jason started and serves as pastor. But soon after moving to Colorado Springs, Colo., to start that church, Tippets discovered she had breast cancer. Despite aggressive treatment, the cancer spread throughout her body.
      Kara describes herself as a terrible sick person. She hates being sick, so it might have been easy for her to retreat into self-pity. Instead, she started blogging about her experiences with a remarkable transparency that immediately won her as many as 20,000 daily page views on her blog, Mundane Faithfulness. A publisher soon discovered the blog and the result is her first book, The Hardest Peace: Expecting Grace in the Midst of Life’s Hard.

Heidi again. I bought her book. I've yet to read it. Her blog posts make me cry, I'm afraid to open her book. When Kara writes, her heart pours out. You can see that open heart in pictures of her. Even in pain, her smile is wide and opening.

Most of us are not living in stage four cancer. We have been given the gift of one more day. How will you embrace today? 

Can you push yourself and "love beyond your limits?" as Kara discusses in her other book? Her blog and her books are meant for the world to embrace life. To live large. Can you set the things of the world down long enough to take advantage of the time you do have with your loved ones?

From Covered Wagons to Facebook

I’ve always been taken aback at how quickly the Industrial Revolution changed America and the world. Laura Ingalls Wilder, born in 1867, crossed the prairie in a covered wagon as a girl and might have flown across the Midwest as an adult. (Whether she actually did or not, I have no idea.) To have seen the transportation industry make such massive progress in her lifetime must have been a source of amazement.

It dawned on me, however, that I have seen such progress in the communication industry. I’ve gone from talking on a party-line, rotary-dial telephone to texting on my smart phone. As a girl, I could only watch my favorite movies once a year when they came on TV. (And Katy bar the door if someone interrupted.) Music went from 45s to Pandora by way of albums, eight track tapes, cassettes, CDs, MP3s. When Bill and I first got married, nearly thirty-four years ago, we hosted a computer bulletin board service (BBS). Think really old, really slow chat room. It took days to have a conversation. Now, I’m posting on Facebook, pinning on Pinterest and taking pictures (via that smart phone) on Instagram.

Wonder what the next fifty years will bring?