who has time to blog?

I have not posted in a few days. . . . sometimes I feel like I have not thought in a few days. Life intrudes on thought, though ideally it would be the other way: thought would intrude on life. But so much of my life is just what Elisabeth Elliot calls "doing the next thing." Sometimes I "do the next thing" because I am anxious and distracted and need a clear, simple direction to follow; other times I "do the next thing" because I am running on autopilot.

And then sometimes, like now, there are so many things waiting that I can't clearly discern what "the next thing" is. They're not standing in a neat queue. Right now it could be a sink full of dishes, any one of four baskets of dirty laundry, a phone call to my elderly father, a letter to a judge who holds my brother's future in her hands, a note of encouragement to a friend whose mother is dying, the walk I have missed for several days because of rain, planning my children's homeschool lessons for the day, responding to my email, writing to my brother in prison, spending a few minutes with my 18 year old daughter who will be leaving home this fall; you get the point. Sometimes I just have to choose a "next thing" and hope it's the right one, because how could anyone know???

I can only pray for wisdom, which God has promised to give (James chapter 1) and ask God to somehow "establish the work of my (feeble) hands." Help me to actually love the people you have given me to love and to choose the things which will matter when it's all said and done. Because one day it will be.