Don't miss it.

She sang along to the music flowing out of the car stereo. Her forehead pressed against the backseat window, her eight-year-old voice clear and bright. My foot pressed against the brake pedal, holding our place in the Dairy Queen drive thru line. Stars shone above the neighborhood trees.

“Don’t miss it.” The quiet voice between my ears whispered the reminder.

She continued singing along, and as she did, warmth and delight spread through my heart. Her sweet, little voice. Those small, beautiful moments go by so fast, and we can miss them. In the midst of deadlines, broken appliances, disjointed technology, and the hurried human psyche, we can miss It. Life. Beauty. Hope. Peace. We can easily veer toward conflict rather than creating. We can easily stress out instead of release.

One of the songs we sing at my church uses the lyrics, “Jesus…He is the hope for the hopeless and broken.” One time the lyrics had been spelled incorrectly and they displayed ironically on the screen: “He is the hope for the hopless and borken.”

Singing, writing, practicing art, reading, exercising, these are a few of the ways God has gifted humans with the ability to communicate, grow, and draw closer to his heart. As you pursue those great goals God has entrusted to you, remember that you must use some time to hustle, but you must also use time to simply be. Sometimes you need to just hear a child singing. Sometimes you just need to laugh about chaos. Sometimes you are hopless and borken. “Rejoice always! Pray constantly. Give thanks in everything, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). Maybe you need to be the child, the student, the big heart, singing, creating, writing, praising. Allow yourself to rethink the way we do things. Don’t miss it.