Quote: What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. – A.W. Tozer

Pondering: I’ve been pondering death a lot this week. Morbid, I know, but Solomon said “better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting”. I’ve lost a lot of people this year, and yesterday was the anniversary of the death of one of my best friends.

Here’s what I posted on Facebook about it: “Well, another year has gone by and the anniversary of the death of one of my closest friends, Russell Comstock has passed. I found myself angry all day, in a bad mood and overwhelmingly sad. There is a hole in your life when a friend is gone, but their impact remains. Because of Russ, I appreciate fresh ground coffee, avocados, greasy spoon breakfast joints, reggae, and above all, Russ taught me that the people who smile the biggest are sometimes the most broken. That smile he was known for came with a price tag and I knew much of what it took for him to give it. He’d dealt with so much pain in his life that he contented himself with simply making others happy. I miss you my friend, and it’s gonna always hurt until we meet again.”

Worship: Matt Redmond…gosh, has it been 20 years since most of those songs were penned? Yet, the other night, my daughter wanted to hear a particular song at the dinner table and we started geeking out on the catalogue of songs that guy has produced. It was like our dining room was filled with the Spirit of God, and God’s presence blessed our table. It was like lying down by still waters, and having our souls restored. As much as I love rock, and am a huge music fanatic, I determined that worship needs to take more a central place in my life going forward. I worship using songs that others probably wouldn’t recognize as ever being used for that purpose, but then again, I’m an odd duck. That said, when somebody is as gifted as Redmond, it makes you feel like you’re sitting at the feet of a Psalmist, and how cool would it have been to worship with David as the psalms dripped from his fingertips as he plucked his lyre?

Buy Peyton’s newest book “Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art” over on Amazon.com. You can also download a free chapter and watch a cool trailer for the book HERE or click the image below.