"Suppose you are walking in a forest, talking with God, and you hear the tap, tap, tap of a woodpecker. You break off the trail and off your talk with God to look for the woodpecker—have you stopped praying? Not if by seeking the woodpecker you are 'considering the ravens.' If Jesus asks us to consider the ravens as a way of striving for the Kingdom, isn't straining to see a woodpecker a kind of striving after the Kingdom?" —from Long Wandering Prayer

Go long, or go home." That's what my friends and I say about our favorite golf course. It's cheap and beautiful, but you have to hit the ball a long way to get around strung-out doglegs cut into woods so thick I won't go in for a ball without a bag of breadcrumbs and a chain saw.

"Go long, or go home" in my prayer life means "Pray long, or you might as well quit the ministry." When the lion Busywork crouches in my study, roaring sticky notes, smelling like a deadline, licking up my time, I defy him to get between me and my time with ...