58°?

I grew up in the Tri-Cities in Washington State.  Situated close to Oregon and Idaho in the far south-east corner of the state, it was (and still is) a desert.  Every summer the hydro-planes would come to town to race on the mighty Columbia River.  Boat-race weekend was HOT.  Easily reaching over 100°, there was no mistaking that it was hot.

After graduating college (go Cougs!), my new husband and I moved to Minnesota.  Just west of the Twin Cities, we settled in a tiny little farm-town.  That winter it got COLD!  Enormous sized lakes froze solid and people drove their cars on them pulling little shacks, drilled holes in the frozen water and fished through the feet of solid ice.  Ridiculous?  perhaps.  It could easily not get above 0° (& that's Fahrenheit!) for several days in a row.  One step outside and there was no mistaking that it was cold.

Warm, on the other hand, is, well, not hot and not cold.  Sitting out on a boat in the middle of the Columbia in July, I'd tell you 58° is cold.  But sitting out in the middle of Lake Minnetonka in January in an ice-fishing hut (as if I have ever done that), I'd tell you 58° sounded like a heat wave.  Warm is not so obvious.  It has a bit of cold and a bit of hot, but it's hard to decided which it is really.

*****

I set out to learn-and-apply this year.  I have a really nasty habit of learning what I need to and locking it away never to actually be used in my "real" life.  Sort-of like learning just for the test, which I am brilliant at, by the way!  (& which explains why my French is so bad!)  This year, I wanted to learn something about the way God asks His followers to live and then, brace yourself, actually put what I learned into practice in my life.  Make changes, do things differently, think differently, respond differently.  And not "just for the test", but for my life.  Make changes that would change me forever.  Forever.  

The task seemed overwhelming at first.  Where to begin?  What to read?  What to listen to?  So many choices!  But one thing kept repeating over & over & over again.  lukewarm.  lukewarm.  lukewarm.  Everything I read, everything I listened to, everywhere was this message of being warm, not hot, not cold.  I decided this sounded like a great place to begin my quest and so I started here, in Revelation 3:14-22.