Every Christmas season, a certain piece of music seems to follow me everywhere—from radio jingles to shopping mall speakers. But it wasn’t until a snowy evening in 2012 that Handel’s Messiah truly captured my heart. That December, I decided to take my wife on a date to see the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s performance. I had always liked classical music, but nothing prepared me for what I would experience that evening.

Daily commutes don’t need to be boring. For the past 14 years (except for a hiatus in 2020), my drive to work has been about 30 minutes. I learned early on to listen to something and have since consumed over 2 months of audiobooks (thanks Audible!). But of course I’m driving, so I have to be aware of my surroundings too.

One feature that captivates me nearly every day is a wide, slow moving river that once represented the border of the colonial frontier. The Susquehanna was the first major obstacle to westward expansion, and it was the route I travel on now that generally follows the same highway on which generations of early pioneers trudged. US 30 crosses the river on the Wright’s Ferry bridge, and just downriver this is the older Veterans Memorial Bridge (currently closed for a few years of retrofitting). On my side of the river (York County) sits Wrightsville borough, and on the Lancaster County side is Columbia, which was once a candidate to be capital until Washington D. C. won out.

When airport baggage conveyors brought mine and Andrea’s matching black suitcases into a terminal, it was hard to distinguish them from other generic bags rolling alongside them. They were branded as Jeep, but they weren’t extraordinary, and toward the end of their usefulness, I picked them out by their rips, broken wheels, and other scars.

They were part of our marriage from the beginning. My parents bought them from Sam’s Club as their wedding gift to us, and our first trip with them was our downtown Chicago honeymoon. The original plan was a honeymoon in the Yucatan Peninsula, but spring 2009 was the height of the “Swine Flu” epidemic, and with all the flight and hotel accommodation cancellations, we settled for the far less tropical Windy City in May.

My family has about a fifteen minute drive to church. It’s a scenic drive that includes farm fields contoured to the rolling hillsides, thick woodlands, and a small town. Often as my family loads into our car, the bells of a nearby church sound out through the southern Pennsylvania countryside. It’s not our church, but I still enjoy hearing those bells—the ancient call for the community to worship their Creator, Lord, and Savior.

I’m not sure about everyone else, but for me it’s easy to be pulled into investing in shiny new tools when learning a skill.

When I picked up running, I heard about all the gadgets: smart watches, GPS, pricey shoes, running shirts, running shorts, head bands, wrist bands, armbands for your phone, apps for your phone, app subscriptions, virtual running coaches, and many more. Where do you start?

I’ve found writing to be the same. There are computer programs to write your first draft and others for editing; there are spelling/grammar checkers and analyzers that give you metrics for the whole manuscript (overused words, redundancies, glue words, etc.). But don’t forget about the research, plotting, and planning stages, each having their own array of tools you can choose from.

I admit it—I’ve cried during a movie. And it’s hard to say that. I grew up proud of being unemotional; in fact, I would say I’m still pretty restrained. Yet, a few years back as a 30-year-old man, I actually shed a few tears while watching a film. No, it’s worse than that: it was during a documentary—and not the kind you would first imagine.

My wife, Andrea, and I were watching BBC’s Planet Earth II. Yeah, you read that right: Planet Earth. It was towards the end of the first episode, Islands. It wasn’t about cuddly dogs or majestic eagles; it was penguins. Let me explain.

Romans 12:3-8

In December 1958, (a few months before Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Brogue, Pennsylvania was founded), Leonard Read published a short essay in a magazine called The Freeman that made this assertion: no single person on the face of the earth knows how to make a pencil. He wrote the essay, I Pencil, to illustrate the futility of a planned economy and the power of a free market. Though this is not about economics, I see an interesting parallel with a letter written almost 2,000 years before I, Pencil.

Modern society, perhaps more than ever, drives us to consume. We consume products then dispose of them when they become outdated. We absorb all that our phones, computers, Alexa’s, and streaming service demands. Though some of us may spend less time consuming than others, we still devour food, media, and words daily.

And what of our relationship with God? We can sit under preaching three times per week. We read and prayerfully consider the Bible, which of course is all good. But I argue that just as we consume, we also ought to create.