It was Betty Tallmadge who said, "Life is what happens to you when you're making other plans." Serendipitous things happen if we are willing to let them. Our plans must be adjustable to allow life to do what it will with us. We collect seashells with our children but fall in love with the hobby ourselves. We search for a particular painting but come upon a gorgeous piece of furniture instead. We take an elective course as a filler and end up pursuing the field professionally. After the death of a Rabbi, one of his disciples was asked, "What was most important for your teacher?" The disciple thought for a moment and replied, "Whatever he happened to be doing at the moment." 

Friend of Dial Hope, no matter where you are - driving in a car, the sanctity of your home, vacationing, a hospital bed, at your place of work - live fully this day, which is an unrepeatable miracle. Be open to surprises. Be playful. Focus on the constant sacrament of the little moments. 

Let us pray: O God of all precious things, including animals and the majesty of your creation, who hears our pain even when fears block our words, create in us a heart of laughter and hope. May your spirit of comfort still the anxiety of those who live with enormous pressure and stress; may it fill the emptiness of lost and lonely lives. Weave your love, joy, and gratitude into the tapestry of our moments this day. Thank you, God. Amen.

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A few years ago I took up woodworking as a hobby. I started with fish carved out of scrap wood, then sharks from driftwood, and eventually Polynesian-style tikis out of discarded palm trees.

And somewhere along the way I noticed something funny happening while I worked on the tikis. As I carved out the eyes, I would find myself thinking: now you have eyes — but you can't see. As I shaped the mouth: now you have a mouth — but you can't speak. 

I was, without meaning to, narrating Psalm 115 to a piece of wood.

"They have mouths but do not speak. They have eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear.”

Obviously, I was not making the tiki to worship it. But as I reflected on it, I thought, you know there would have to be some comfort in having something to grab hold of in difficult times. Even the act of carving it, making it, was a way of trying to gain some measure of control over a life that often feels completely out of control.

I don’t know about you, but I can certainly identify with that need; that desire to have some measure of control. 

We all have our versions of this. The things we construct to manage our anxiety — our routines, our contingency plans, our carefully maintained illusion that we are in charge of how things turn out. They're not the wooden idols of old. But they serve a similar purpose.

The psalm doesn't mock that impulse. It simply reminds us that if we trust only what we can make or control, we have limited ourselves to the possibilities of our own making. And we were made for something larger than that.

Prayer: Gracious God, we confess how much energy we spend trying to stay in control — building our own small securities. Loosen our grip today. Remind us that we are held by hands far steadier than our own. Amen.

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Some years ago, some close friends of mine had a business they had built together over their entire married lives. It was all they knew. Then the recession hit — and it was like a perfect storm. A big box store opened down the road. Business dropped to nothing. With two kids in high school and their business note tied to their home, they watched everything they had built begin to fall apart.

And there came a moment, as there often does, when they had exhausted every other option. There was nothing left to strategize, nothing left to renegotiate, no angle they hadn't already tried. All that was left to do was pray.

I think about that phrase. All that was left.

We tend to treat prayer as a last resort — something we turn to when the practical options run out. And I understand that. But I wonder if we have it backwards. Because in the Psalms, prayer is not a last resort. It is the first language of a people who know, at the deepest level, that they are not in control. That they never were.

Psalm 80 is a prayer from people who have hit exactly that wall. Everything has fallen apart. And they cry out — not with polished words or confident theology, but with raw, honest need: "Restore us, O God. Let your face shine, that we may be saved."

Most of us have been there. There is no shame in arriving at that place. In fact, there may be a kind of grace in it — the grace of finally letting go of the illusion that we were holding everything together on our own.

My friends eventually found their way through. Not easily, and not quickly. But they did. And looking back, they will tell you that the season of all that was left was also, strangely, one of the most faith-forming seasons of their lives.

Prayer: Loving God, we confess that we often come to you last. Forgive us for that. And meet us here — in the place where our own resources have run out and you are all that is left. That may be exactly where you do your best work. Amen.

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There is an old Yiddish story about a Rabbi who wanted to teach a young boy about God's presence everywhere. He said to the boy, "Show me every place where God is, and I'll give you a penny."

The boy looked at him and replied, "Show me any place that God isn't — and I'll give you two pennies."

Out of the mouths of children.

Psalm 80 is a prayer from a community in deep distress — defeated, shamed, wondering where God has gone. And yet underneath the lament, something keeps surfacing. A memory. A history. You have been here before. You planted us like a vine. You cleared the ground for us. You have had your hand in our lives.

They are not reminding God of this so much as reminding themselves. Rehearsing the evidence. Rebuilding, brick by brick, a foundation of trust that the present crisis has shaken.

That is one of the oldest spiritual practices — recalling where God has been, especially when you cannot see where God is now. The dark places of life have a way of narrowing our vision. We see only what is immediately in front of us — the diagnosis, the loss, the fear. We forget the long history of faithfulness that brought us to this moment.

The boy in the story had it exactly right. There is no place that God isn't. Not the hospital room. Not the sleepless night. Not the moment of failure or grief or confusion. God is already there — present, at work in ways we may not be able to see yet.

Show me any place that God isn't.

Prayer: Gracious God, when the darkness narrows our vision, help us to remember. Remind us of where you have been faithful — in our own lives, in the lives of those who came before us. Give us eyes to find you in the places we least expect. You are already there. Amen.

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During World War II, some of those hiding from the Nazis scratched words into the cellar walls where they took shelter. Someone — we don't know who — wrote this:

I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. I believe in the power of love, even when I don't feel it. I believe in God, even when he is silent.

I have read those words many times. And every time, I am stopped by them. Because whoever wrote them was not writing from a place of comfort or certainty. They were writing from a cellar. In hiding. From a world that had gone terrifyingly dark.

And still — I believe.

That is not naive faith. That is faith that has been tested to its absolute limit and has chosen, against all evidence, to hold on.

Psalm 80 knows this territory. It is a prayer written in the aftermath of catastrophe — a community defeated, humiliated, struggling to understand where God has gone. And yet they pray. They cry out. They refuse to let go of the God who seems, in this moment, to have let go of them.

The Psalm begins by calling God Shepherd — the one who leads, protects, provides. And even in their darkest hour, they cannot stop addressing him that way. That is faith. Not the absence of doubt, but the refusal to stop speaking to the One you are not sure is listening.

If you are in a season where God feels silent — you are in good company. The Psalmist was there. The people in that cellar were there. Keep speaking anyway. Keep reaching. The sun is still there, even when you cannot see it.

Prayer: O God, there are seasons when you feel very far away. When the silence is long and the darkness deep. We choose, like those who have gone before us, to believe anyway — in the sun, in love, in you. Hold us fast, even when we cannot feel your grip. Amen.

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