Happy 26th...

My mom sent me a birthday e-mail today containing an exerpt from a book she has been reading. I thought I would post it here. It is one of my wishes as I blow out my proverbial candles today:

Let me (my mom) share some thoughts from a book I’ve just read called Wild Goose Chase. The Celtic Christians called the Holy Spirit the Wild Goose:

The promptings of the Holy Spirit can sometimes seem pretty pointless, but rest assured, God is working his plan. And if you chase the Wild Goose, he will take you places you never could have imagined going by paths you never knew existed…A part of us feels that something is spiritually wrong with us when we experience circumstantial uncertainty. But that’s precisely what Jesus promised us when we start following him. Most of us will have no idea where we are going most of the time. That is unsettling. But circumstantial uncertainty also goes by another name: adventure.

When God puts a passion in your heart, whether it be relieving starvation in Africa or educating children in the inner city or making movies with redemptive messages, that God ordained passion becomes your responsibility.

So what makes you cry? What makes you pound your fist on the table? What makes you smile? If you want to discover your God-ordained passions, then you need to identify what makes you sad, mad or glad…God-ordained passions sometimes break our hearts. And they can seem like an overwhelming burden to bear. But pursuing our passions is the key to living a fruitful and fulfilling life. It is the thing that wakes us up early in the morning and keeps us up late at night. It is the thing that turns a career into a calling. It is the thing that gives us goose bumps—Wild Goose bumps. And nothing will bring you greater joy.

Frederick Buechner once wrote: “The voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness. What can we do that makes us the gladdest? I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good think and it is our thing.”

I can't wait...I just love it.