There are a lot of authors in the Christian world, but not nearly as many writers. There are a lot of people who publish books, but few who have a level of mastery over the English language. There are a lot of people who can say what’s true, but not very many who say it beautifully.

Seth Lewis is one of those rare authors who can truly write. I have been reading his blog for a number of years and have admired his ability to write both poetry and prose that is interesting, compelling, and full of beauty. I was thrilled, then, to learn that he has now also written a book, Dream Small: The Secret Power of the Ordinary Christian Life.
Dream Small takes as its starting point the fact that most of us enlist our dreams and ambitions in the direction of self-aggrandizement. We dream big in the sense that we dream of changing the whole world. And if we fail to do so, if we fail to achieve fame, fortune, or power, we then tend to believe we have failed to live a life of significance.
“The world around you will constantly encourage you to follow your dreams,” says Lewis. “That’s not bad advice as far as it goes, but I’m asking you to pause first, and take the time to ask an important question that often gets overlooked: just where, exactly, are your dreams leading you? Before you follow your dreams, you need to aim them. And what will you aim them at? The default assumption which says that bigger dreams will always turn out better is simply not true. Where will you find better dreams?”
That’s exactly what his book is about. It’s about dreaming better dreams and then working to achieve them. This means he has to set humanity in its proper context as wonderfully significant to God, yet also infinitesimal by comparison to God. He has to explain how the gospel redeems us and directs us toward the good of others and the glory of God. He has to show that God’s values are very different from the world’s and, therefore, often very different from our own. He has to show that by dreaming small we can accumulate achievements that God deems great.

You are here for a purpose. You were carefully crafted with a perfect plan in mind. You are a character in the greatest story ever told, and your life, and your actions, and your decisions—even today—can send shockwaves into eternity. Maybe the role God has for you is big and public. Maybe it is quiet, behind the scenes, where hardly anyone will notice. Don’t worry about that. You can invest in loving God and loving the people he loves from wherever you are, and the best ways to do that have always been the closest, most ordinary, most overlooked and under-appreciated ways, like humble service to humble people and time spent with God and all the little ways we can remind each other of God’s truth and God’s love and the big story he made us to be part of.

To dream small, he explains, is not to miss out on God’s plan for our lives, but to find it, to take hold of it, and to live it out. It’s to live a life of the highest significance to the God whose ways are so very different from our own.
A few years ago the Christian world saw a whole crop of books that dealt with being ordinary—a natural reaction, I think, to books like Radical and Do Hard Things which meant to shake people out of their spiritual complacency. These books achieved their purpose, but may have also discouraged some who tried to be radical and some who tried to do hard things, but who in the end found themselves still living very ordinary lives. Dream Small offers an important correction. It shows beautifully that the most significant Christian life is also the most ordinary Christian life.

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Like so many Canadian boys of his era, Nick went through a pretty significant Nerf Gun phase when he was 8 or 10 years old. Between several birthdays and Christmases he built up quite an arsenal and, for a time, most of his play would in some way involve these guns. There was one game he especially enjoyed. When he found out that guests were on their way over, he would hide outside and watch for their approach. When they walked down the pathway leading to our home, he would pop out of his hiding spot and unleash a fusillade of foam bullets. He loved nothing more than a successful ambush. And though his guns are no longer in his hands and he is no longer in our home, he still sets ambushes, though only inadvertently.

The unbearably sharp pain of those earliest days and months has over time given way to something that is perhaps closer to a dull ache. The loss still hurts, but not quite as badly as it once did. I still cry, but not every day. The path is still hard, but not as hard as it was months or even weeks ago. If time does not heal all wounds, it does, at least, soothe them.
One of the ways the pain has become more bearable is simply by having Nick less on my mind now than in the early days. As I get on with a life that has begun to feel like a new kind of normal, I associate him more with the past than with the present or immediate future. My love for him is undiminished, of course, as is my longing to see him. But he is not as constant a presence in my mind now as he was before. I still think about him every day, but no longer every moment.
But there are still times when he ambushes me, when a situation arises in which I’m once again forced to confront my loss head-on. And this, as it happens, is one of them. We are in Louisville, Kentucky this weekend for two significant events. Today we will attend the ceremony in which Nick’s fiancée Ryn and a number of his friends will graduate. On Sunday we will celebrate Abby’s wedding. We anticipate that it will be a weekend of great rejoicing.
Yet behind the joy we know there will also be some sorrow. After all, this would have been Nick’s graduation as well. Though he had enrolled in a program in which he would complete both his undergraduate degree and his Masters of Divinity in five years, he was scary smart and very hard-working and was on track to complete it all in only four. And so this is the day he would have graduated twice over, once from Boyce College and once from Southern Seminary. This is the day he would have finished up one phase of his life to begin another—to finish up his studies and begin his ministry. Yet, in God’s providence, his name will go uncalled in the long roll of young men and women who step up to receive their diplomas, who throw their caps into the air to celebrate the end of one phase of their lives and the beginning of another.
As soon as the graduation ceremony is over, we will change our focus to Abby and Nathan’s big day. We know, of course, that Nick will be conspicuous by his absence in the wedding party, in the family photographs, and in the speeches. He, after all, was Abby’s close confidant and dear friend and would have had a prominent place at the wedding. He, after all, was immeasurably precious to each of us. Yet, in God’s providence, he has joined into a different kind of celebration and has taken his place at a different kind of feast.
But whether in graduation ceremonies or wedding celebrations, we intend to rejoice rather than weep, to celebrate rather than lament, to look forward rather than back. We believe that God calls us to enjoy his good gifts, even when our hearts have been broken. And we can do this, for one of the paradoxes of life in this world is that in our deepest sorrows we are never without joy and in our highest joys we are never without sorrows. We learn that there are times to rejoice with those who rejoice and times to weep with those who weep—and that we have no right to demand that the rejoicing weep or that the weeping rejoice. There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
And so this a weekend of laughing, not weeping, of dancing, not mourning. There may be some ambushes along the way and the tears that come with them, and that’s just fine. But we are certain that the joy of these days will be far more prominent than the sorrow. We are certain that God means for us to embrace and enjoy the pleasures he has provided, to celebrate what actually is rather than to lament what could have been. For each of these celebrations in its own way points us forward to a future in which there will be no pain left to lament. Each of life’s pleasures in its own way gestures us toward a time in which there will be no sorrow left to grieve. Each of God’s blessings calls us to rejoice. And by his grace we will.
(Here’s a precious picture that was taken just a couple of days before Nick died. Nick and Ryn had recently gotten engaged while Abby and Nate had recently begun dating. It was Abby’s birthday, so they all went out for dinner together. I’m so thankful they thought to ask the waiter to snap a photo.)

Good morning from Argentina where I’m making a one-day stop in Buenos Aires as I transition from Chile to Brazil.

(Yesterday on the blog: And You Shall Never Displease Me)
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God intends the Christian life to be a life of joy—not drudgery. The idea that holiness is associated with a dour disposition is a caricature of the worst sort. In fact, just the opposite is true. Only those who walk in holiness experience true joy. —Jerry Bridges