“We have to make plans and provisions for good things to happen in our lives.”       Joe Moore

Among my plans and provisions this year is a simple concept: Show up.

I think life is like one of those raffles where you must be present to win. Nobody else is going to hold my ticket for the drawing while I go home to take a nap. I have to show up every day, all the time, with no idea whether or not I will win.

That is true of my morning ritual. This is not my chair. But it is such an inviting room, isn’t it? My own chair is in a similar corner, but it is never sunny outside when I settle into it.

I go there every morning, a smidgen earlier than I want to be awake. I open my Bible and start to read the selected passages for the day. I use a routine someone once called The Full Meal Deal. It includes a chapter from the Old Testament, a Psalm (or five if they are short), the Proverb of the Day (there are 31 in the Book of Proverbs) and something from the New Testament. (Our church is reading together this year. We’re in Matthew right now.)

Sometimes, I fall asleep. Or I read for thirty minutes and don’t remember a single thing. Or I slog through a long list of names and get lost in all the consonants. But, by golly, I showed up.

And then, one morning, with no warning at all: “This is the way, walk ye in it” explodes from the page. Something so true, so rare, so perfectly-timed for the needs of the day it seems to have been lifted directly from my morning prayers.

It isn’t easy to show up for life every day. But I’m determined to do it. Because I’ve learned good things happen there.