Author: William Douthwaite

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Perfect Peace: Mindfulness in Isaiah 26

Posted on by William Douthwaite

A “through the bible” devotion from Isaiah 26.

“You keep him in perfect peace
    whose mind is stayed on you,
    because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3)

I paused at this verse in Isaiah because it spoke of the mind. How many times have I read that Christian faith is not something to engage your intellect but a truth to touch your soul? I’ve often read that the longest distance is from the brain to the heart. The gospel is more than information about Christ. It’s the foundation of a relationship with him.

That’s all good and valid, but what about Isaiah’s image of a mind stayed on God?

  • When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).
  • Paul wrote about being transformed by “renewing your mind” (Romans 12:2).
  • Paul also encouraged believers to have a mind like Christ, which he described as humble, obedient, and sacrificial (Philippians 2:5).
  • Paul also reminded his readers that “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). Want to get inside the head of God? You can in Christ.
  • Paul also comes down hard on those with “minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:19). Instead of that, “Set your minds on things that are above” (Col. 3:2).

In so many ways, scripture tells me to get my head in the game. It challenges me, “What were you thinking?” It directs to me to grow in both grace and knowledge (2 Peter 3:18). It reminds me to consider, “What’s my mindset today?”

I can wrap my head around this. I am a logical thinker. This makes sense to me. Am I anxious, worried, upset, or unsettled? My mind needs a reset. At any given moment, what’s on my mind? Probably not the things of God. I need a reset. I need to refocus. I need to redirect my thinking.

How do I do that? I remember that Christ is the cornerstone. The prophetic and apostolic scriptures are the foundation. I build my life on those truths rather than circumstances, current events, financial news, the well-intended opinions of others, and my own limited understanding.

My mind will never stay focused on God. My desires, the world, and Satan himself continually distract me.

But I can pursue mindfulness. Being mindful is more than being in the moment. It’s about being mindful of God’s love, grace, truth, and authority over this moment.

You can trust him, depend on him, and be stay your mind on him. In return your get shalom shalom, that is, perfect peace.

Posted in Life

Lost and found: a robot story

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Onur Binay on Unsplash

My robot vacuum got lost.

It was my fault. When we rearranged some of the furniture in the bedrooms, I moved the dock for the Roborock 5S that has been methodically winding his way through our home for the past five years. I figured if I moved the vacuum and the dock to a new spot, he would know where he was.

As soon as I started a room cleaning cycle, I knew there was a problem. Carson (the name we assigned to the robot vacuum) pulled out of the dock and began spinning in circles. I picked him up and took him out to the living room to get his bearings. He wandered here and there and finally headed back to the dock.

I let him decompress for a few weeks, but decided it was time to get back to work. I deleted the maps from the phone app and started him up. He went into “clean and map out the whole house mode” and finished up two hours later. I checked my phone and he vacuumed every room and found his way home again. Perfect!

Some folks are worried that robots will take over the world. They will develop the ability to replicate themselves. When they determine that humans are no longer essential, the robots will eliminate people from the planet.

I do not think I have much to worry about anytime soon. My personal robot gets lost in the only home he’s ever known!

Posted in Life

I’ve been wearing that for a long time

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Daily writing prompt
What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today?
View all responses

The oldest thing I’m wearing today is my gold wedding ring, which I’ve worn daily since 1984. I’m pretty sure it’s 14 karat gold, but I can’t easily get it off my finger to check.

In second place is my watch, a Citizen Eco-Drive I bought six years ago. Fed up with the poor quality of the digital running watches I usually wore, I purchased a self-winding analog watch that has worked perfectly since I bought it.

This prompt made me think of older clothing I still wear. I’ve got two suits, black and navy, that I bought in 2014. I got my money’s worth out of them. I have a blue herringbone blazer from at least thirty years ago. I can only wear it if the temperature gets down to freezing, which rarely happens in Florida.

My red clerical stole dates back to my ordination in 1986. I still wear it on occasion.

Posted in Life

The worst lawn in the neighborhood? A contender.

Posted on by William Douthwaite

The home pictured above was completed less than a year ago. A family moved in, and now their front yard looks like this. Nice, huh?

I and the big dog walk by here four or five times a week. We watched them clear the lot, pour the foundation, set the roof trusses in place, stucco the walls, install windows and doors, and throw a whole lot of dead-looking sod into the yard. I remember commenting to the dog, who just pees on it anyway, “I can’t believe they lay sod that looks like that.” When brown, dry, dead looking clumps of dirt and grass are thrown across an inch of topsoil, it’s going to look like the picture above.

Did it rain? Did they water it? Do they have a lawn service? Does anyone care? I have no idea. I just know that it’s never going to look better than it does in this picture. The weeds will propagate and grow taller. The existing grass will retreat in humiliation. You’ll only get an answering machine if you call the builder. Bottom line: you have a crap lawn.

A good lawn in Florida is a full-time job. Few homeowners can do it without the services of a lawn company. That’s just the way it is. Bugs, mold, drought, weeds, torrential rain, pets, and poor soil present huge obstacles to a decent looking lawn any where in Florida.

We had a great looking lawn in the front and back yards. Thick, lush, and green. Then we got a Great Dane puppy. For six months, her urine burned brown spots in the lawn. When she grew to full size, she tore paths running back and forth across the back yard. Months of floods followed by weeks of drought took its toll. The back yard was a mess. I banned the dogs from the back yard, re-sodded bare spots, and prayed for rain. By the grace of God, it’s growing back.

Growing in seems to take much longer than ripping up. Just be patient. The rain will come. The sun will shine. The grass will grow!

Unless you are the guy whose yard is featured above. Yeah, that’s not gonna grow back. He can look forward to tall weeds, mud, and bugs. Welcome to the neighborhood.

After messing around with it for years, my wife said, “Get a lawn guy.” The next day, someone from Scott’s came by offering a special on monthly lawn service. “Sign me up!” They were bought out by TruGreen. They’ve done a great job for the last fifteen years.

Posted in dogs

How dare that storm come into our yard!

Posted on by William Douthwaite
This isn’t Winston, but you get the idea

Suddenly, it’s thunderstorm season. After a dry early spring, daily showers soak the yard, and everything is turning green again. However, our small white dog Winston takes umbrage at the loud rumbles echoing across the sky. With a endless barrage of barks, he waits at the back door, ready to take on the storm.

“Hey, it’s pouring rain. You don’t want to go out there.”

Yes he does. He doesn’t give up. Finally I give in. “Alright. Go get ’em!”

I open the door and he sprints out into the pouring rain. In less than a minute, he’s soaking wet, running along the fence, giving the storm a stern barking lecture about getting too close to our yard.

I didn’t realize it was raining so hard. “Hey, get back in here.” He didn’t even glance back at me, determined to get to the source of that thunder. I whistled. No response. I closed the door. He’ll let me know when he’s ready to come back inside.

Ten minutes of torrential rains later, I heard a yip at the back door. Finally. I grabbed a towel and caught his collar as he scooted inside. I dried him off as much as I could. I released him to roll around on the carpet for a bit.

The next thunder came right on the heels of a big flash of lightning. It was very close. Winston returned to yapping at the back door. “No way. You’re not going out there. Cool it.”

Ten minutes later, the storm had moved on, just distant flashes of lightning over the ocean. It was quiet. Winston was fast asleep on his side. He had given that storm what for. Another job well done.

Posted in fitness, Life

The green kettlebell

Posted on by William Douthwaite

So I’m just walking down the street with the big dog, as I so often do, and spy a green kettlebell sitting in someone’s driveway.

Okay, someone is clearly in the middle of a MetCon (metabolic conditioning) workout where someone repeatedly runs and does kettlebell swings and other exercises for time.

The strange thing is, there’s no “someone” around. The garage door is closed. I don’t see anyone running. The twenty-pound kettlebell is just parked there in front of the street.

If you’ve ever read my stuff, you know I like to speculate about things like this.

Maybe it rolled out of a delivery truck. The driver pulled out too quickly and the box broke apart when it hit the street, stranding the green kettlebell.

Perhaps it escaped the garage gym. We’ve got a collection of dumbbells and kettlebells in our garage. This one could have tumbled past the cars and almost to the street.

Someone may have thrown the kettlebell out of the garage in anger or frustration. Some workouts can be infuriating. Why not take it out on your equipment?

Someone was cleaning house. Garages get cluttered with equipment no one uses. Enough is enough, and some of it goes to the curb.

Could it be a signal?

  • Leave the package in the driveway with green kettlebell. Or else.
  • Where’s the meeting? Look for the green kettlebell.
  • Meet me by the green kettlebell.
  • If the kettlebell’s out, don’t come knocking.

“Let’s paint the garage!” And now the green kettlebell clashes with the new purple walls. “It’s gotta go.”

“It didn’t look like this in the picture.” Few things do. Whoever ordered it expected a different color. Ship it back? Too heavy. Just leave it on the curb. Someone will take it.

“You spilled green paint all over my kettlebell?” I’m going to kill you!

I have never, ever seen a kettlebell in a driveway. Only in a gym or in my garage.

Posted in productivity

One percent

Posted on by William Douthwaite

This is a response to the WordPress daily writing prompt, “What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?”

I love the one percent goal. If you become 1 percent better at something each day, you will be 37 times better at that in a year. Those small incremental increases pay off in a big way.

What does that one percent look like? Read one more sentence in a book than yesterday. Or increase the weight you lift in a workout by one percent. Write one more sentence in your journal than yesterday. Run or walk one percent further than yesterday. Drink one percent more water each day. Practice your instrument one percent longer.

It doesn’t have to be a daily goal. Save one percent more money than last month. Run one percent further than last month. Read one percent more than last month. Whatever. Before you know it, you’ve leveled up your life through small, insignificant improvements.

I’ll often ask myself, “What’s my one percent today?” I don’t have to improve everything every day. But there is always something I can strive to improve by one percent.

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Olive shoots and children

Posted on by William Douthwaite

A “through the bible” devotion from Psalm 128.

Your children will be like olive shoots
    around your table (Psalm 128:3).

When we went to Israel in 2019, our tour guide’s husband owned an olive grove. Since olives are mentioned often in scripture, we took a side trip one day to see a real olive farm.

Our guide made sure we saw shoots growing up from the base of an olive tree. They would soon be trimmed away. But she said, “Look, it’s just like the psalm: olive shoots around the table.”

I loved that moment when ancient words suddenly came to life before my eyes. All of my children have children, olive shoots around their table. And now I understand what a blessing that is. Who knew grand parenting would be such a blessing?

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

Sweet wisdom: biblical honey

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Arwin Neil Baichoo on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Proverbs 24.

My son, eat honey, for it is good,
    and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste (Proverbs 24:13)

All of a sudden, in the middle of Solomon’s wisdom couplets, I find instructions on what to eat.

Honey has many health benefits. Some quick research reveals that honey soothes coughs, strengthens the immune system, and is good for your heart. It has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. It wards off bacteria and viruses. It’s a natural sweetener that is also good for your gut. In can relieve allergy symptoms, too. God created bees so we’d have honey.

Notable bible figures ate honey. Samson ate honey from a beehive he found in the carcass of a lion. Saul’s son Jonathan was able to fight valiantly after eating some honey. John the Baptist survived in the wilderness across the Jordan eating honey with locusts.

Old Testament law prohibited eating badgers, crabs, owls, lizards, and many other creatures. The list of things we should eat is small: honey, bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper, and that’s all that comes to mind. (Feel free to add to my list.) There is much God permits his people to eat, but few things he commands. I don’t know if this counts, but Paul tells Timothy to drink some wine to settle his stomach.

I put honey in my tea. I really like Honey Nut Cheerios. Honey buns are pretty good. I don’t know if they still make Honeycomb cereal, but that’s really good, even if it’s laden with added sugar. I put a little honey in a salmon teriyaki glaze. So honey-wise, I think I’m doing okay. Everything else? It’s a good thing there’s grace.