Leighton Ford has been one of my primary mentors for the last 32 years. He has walked with Christ for 80! Yes, 80 years.  I asked him over lunch recently his most important life lessons. Here they are: 1. Start with what you have been given (i.e. your raw material, what is in you through blood, your family/cultural history). 2. Listen to the voice most true to your heart (i.e. following the invisible thread of God in your life). 3. Be willing to listen to other voices too (e.g. secular novelists, new Christians as they talk about faith, theologians who differ from you). 4. Learn to be thankful for what seems thankless (e.g. pain, loss, betrayal, failure). You will become more than what you would have been otherwise. 5. Open your life to contemplate beauty and cultivate wonder.

Leighton Ford has been one of my primary mentors for the last 32 years. He has walked with Christ for 80! Yes, 80 years.  I asked him over lunch recently his most important life lessons. Here they are: 1. Start with what you have been given (i.e. your raw material, what is in you through blood, your family/cultural history). 2. Listen to the voice most true to your heart (i.e. following the invisible thread of God in your life). 3. Be willing to listen to other voices too (e.g. secular novelists, new Christians as they talk about faith, theologians who differ from you). 4. Learn to be thankful for what seems thankless (e.g. pain, loss, betrayal, failure). You will become more than what you would have been otherwise. 5. Open your life to contemplate beauty and cultivate wonder.