“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
Isaiah 55:8-9
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
One of my favorite sections of the memoir I published earlier this year – “Grace Upon Grace” – includes some reflections around how I saw – and practiced – my role as “pastor’s spouse” during Rebekah’s four-plus decades in ministry. I write about making sure that our home was a sanctuary, a place where Rebekah could recharge, replenish, refresh and experience peace.
Well this past week at Pensacola Beach was just such an experience for both of us. We feel nourished in all the right ways, we both feel rested, and we are filled up with love and light and grace and peace beyond our expectations.
And so it was not all that easy for us to clean up, pack our stuff into the SUV, take one last look around and drive away.
I started Saturday early, rolling out on my bike at 6:30 for a brief low-energy thirty-minute ride. I checked out the gulf side of the island, circled past the for-sale beach-front property I would purchase if I had somewhere in the vicinity of $3,000,000 in spare change and then reluctantly threw my bike in the back of the Subaru.
Rebekah and I enjoyed a slow coffee and a relaxed breakfast before loading up and heading out across the miles of glittering waters, first Santa Rosa Sound and then Pensacola Bay.
But first we stood out on the expansive veranda to enjoy the view one last time; we held hands, we kissed and we offered a prayer of thanksgiving for such a week of generous blessings.
- The amazing beach-house
- The generosity of friends
- The love that so easily spans more than thirty years
- Trinity Presbyterian Church
- Frank and Sylvia Beall
- The Kaleidoscope ministry party Tuesday evening
- The beach
- Pensacola
- Our good life together
- Sunsets and sunrises
Then I grabbed a couple more photographs and we were on the road.
Life is seldom what we plan and always full with unchartered serendipities. What we have in mind is so often thwarted but then we find out, or are reminded, that God’s ideas are so much more imaginative and creative and beautiful than ours.
When I am smart I understand all of this. This was one of those smart weeks and I am full.
Peace, love and blessings – DEREK
