What do you do to challenge your mind!

I just landed in San Diego, and am preparing for the Children’s Pastors’ Conference here. I also just finished Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and was a poor passenger on the plane for the last 100 pages. I spend an inordinate amount of time in airplanes and also in hotel rooms after appointments and meetings with churches and have started to do something unnatural for me. I’ve turned off the TV and picked up a book! Ok, and I read online. But this new habit got me thinking! What does a children’s minister do to exercise their mind? I run my 5 miles every other day, certainly, and I spend time reflecting on the Bible. Since I stopped the TV in my life in the past month and a half (how else to finish War and Peace or Anna Karenina) I am amazed at how much time THAT little distraction can take up in my mind!

If you’ve not read what passes for a great book, or classics or literature that at its core is a moral force of power, then just start with Anna Karenina! The flight attendant probably was a little mystified as I read much with tears of sheer joy as I read ordinary families being who they are. What grabbed me today was page 784 and 785 where Kitty is thinking about her husband Levin (Kostya) as she nurses their baby Dmitry (Mitya). Levin has been having a crisis of faith since he struggles with belief. Kitty, who is a believer without doubt, asks herself ‘what kind of unbeliever is he? With his heart, with that fear of upsetting anyone, even a child! Everything for others, nothing for himself”

and then–this just floored me–when she says to her baby, “Yes, be just like your father, be just like him!”  AH!!!! Love Tolstoy!!!!!