Don't Waste Your Life

Every Sunday evening, around 6:30 p.m. friends scrunch together in our living room for our church's version of small group Bible study--we call them "Community groups." Anyway, Nathan and I started this particular group about 2 years ago, and in that short time it's seen a lot of people come and go. Right now we have around 15-20 people that come, some consistently, some very sporadically.
Justin comes early and usually finds something on the table or in the refrigerator to eat for "dinner." Tyler shows up after him to chat and make the lemonade.
Then there's Rick and Beth, who are getting ready to have a baby girl; Kelli, who cuts my hair and is super-amazing at it, her sister Chelsea and sometimes she brings her 1 1/2 year old son; and there's Kevin and Angeline who help co-lead with us. Kevin is the resident expert on where to get a good meal...anywhere. One time, Nathan and I were in downtown Sacramento around 10 p.m. We called Kevin and said, "Kevin, we're on Q street. Where can we get some take-out pizza?" He promptly directed us down a block to Uncle Vito's. You name the city in California and he's gotcha covered. I can't leave out Brett and Ashlee, Mike and Brandee, and Mike and Alex, Justin and Ivona and there two boys, who were our first ever California friends, and who always absent-mindedly leave behind something at our house,( but we don't give them a hard time anymore because we have a baby now and we understand)...and I'm sure I've left someone out, but I won't think of it until after I publish this, of course.
We've come from all over and I feel like we're living out a Charles Dickens novel where all the characters get introduced in the beginning and you just can't see how they could possible relate to one another, and then by the end of the story their lives are intimately intertwined in one grand story of redemption.

We have just started a 10-week study of John Piper's book, "Don't Waste Your Life." It's timely that we are reading this book now. It has been really healthy for Nathan and I to sit and ask each other questions about what we thought we'd be doing at this stage in life, where we felt God calling us when we got married, and how that lines up (or doesn't line up) with where we're at now. Years ago, a dear woman who mentored me challenged me to write out a "Life Purpose Statement." I review it every year, and it's been good to look at it through the context of what we are reading.
There is a song that has been my anthem for the past few months, and it is truly what we want our lives, our marriage, our family to be about.
It's by Charli Hall, and it's called, "Center." The refrain says:

Oh, Christ, be the Center of our lives.
Be the place we fix our eyes.
Be the center of our lives.
You hold everything together.
You hold everything together.

Praise Jesus, he holds it all together, because I'm learning for the 2,596th time that I sure can't.