Does encouragement need a timetable? Do these precious words need to be added in only during the bleak seasons? It would seem to me that they are always on time! During the dark times they do bring, on their helpful winds, the needed balm for the courage to move ahead. It is often difficult though to tell from appearance that the storms are raging in a particular life.

The unique character of each person is truly an opportunity to see the gift of their wisdom, their resilience, their brightness, their authentic preciousness to make it exactly where they are—whether it is the time of breezes by the shore, or the tumultuous tossing upon dark seas. Thomas a Kempis said it this way: “Be assured that if you knew all, you would pardon all.” This profound statement is so free of judgment that it moves me to know that I don’t have to know it all about another person to encourage them, I only want to extend a word aptly spoken—one that is “like apples of gold in settings of silver..” (Proverbs 25:11) These are the words surely fit for a feast--for the sweet nourishment of fortification.

These kinds of words can be the treasure that moves a life out of dark dead-end alleys. I have hundreds of these phrases that I cherish upon my heart. Their delivery still carries the import of the face of my friend who cared to move me from shadow to wide sunlight, or to move me to a new stage of passion in my gifts. The faces of encouragement have given me of their heart when it could have been a risk to do it-- it may have looked foolish, or have seemed too deep when a platitude could have sufficed (Really, never!).

I have always felt convinced that exhortations are really the profuse overflow of grace (as I watch Jesus walk abroad, reveling in the stranger on the road, in the Gospels) and these Love-phrases are always in season. Romans 15:5-6 was the summit for me: “Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus; that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

An encouragement doesn’t need a bouquet of roses for accompaniment; it has its own blissful fragrance. The image that I’ve posted was a kind word given to me along with the joyous flowers. As I set them on the table they were next to the absurdly, but well bound book that you see in the image--the impetus for this post. It is a photography book with a picture, including a clock, taken somewhere in the world for every minute of a full 12 hour period. As I looked at the juxtaposition I thought about encouragements as the true poetry of a life, and if at the end of my life, all of the encouragements that I have delivered could be bound, I would want it to have a massive reality defying binding on such a blessed book. I would want the graphics on the front to be a silver bowl with golden apples, and on the spine it would read in preposterously large letters: ON TIME!

Be encouraged, Dear Reader! You are so worthy to be urged-on in your valiant and singular life.