Seven Quick Takes

One

Classrooms are built and almost completely painted. Actually, they probably are painted. I left church at eight last night, being assured by our Christian Ed director that she regularly stays up till ten thirty and that she “likes painting”, both of which claims I have a hard time believing. I am constantly grateful for a Christian Ed person who believes that her job not only includes things like organizing curriculum, finding teachers, running VBS, casting a vision, and writing up regulations for the nursery, but also things like de-germing the nursery, painting walls and scraping the floors, and scrubbing mold out of weird corners. I'm pretty sure most of the latter tasks should fall to me but she gets to them before I do. I'm so grateful.

Two

Baby Elspeth is draping herself over me and begging, “Can I please watch Jesus dying. Please please please. Pretty please.” (Only take out all the r's and l's and make them into w's.) She means one of those videos with pretty music but weird sappy pictures of Jesus including pretty brutal ones from Passion of the Christ. The little girls love it so much and watch it over and over shout, “he's gonna die he's gonna die!” And then “he's dead!” And then “he's alive!” Catechesis? Sort of? Or something?

Three

On Sunday we did the Sower and the Seed in Catechesis. I have a six year old in the class who is pretty bright. When I said, “I wonder what the seed is?” he said, “the gospel of Jesus Christ” without any pause. So we all began to wonder who the sower is. This little boy knew it was like a farmer and said so, but wasn't sure he wanted to be a farmer like that. Marigold folded her hands very primly, pursed her lips, and said, “I don't have to be a farmer and sow seeds because I'm a girl” only she really said 'gewl'. I broke all the rules and went ahead and laughed. I'm going to say that next time Matt wants me to do something I don't really feel like doing.

Four

I'm into the beginning of Second Samuel by now, overlayed with Chronicles and Psalms. David is slowly gaining the whole of Israel under him, and all kinds of politics and wrangling are going on. And death. So so so much death, and the butts of the spears “coming out the other side”. And each detail, both favorable and unfavorable, is recorded. It's one of the best defenses of scripture, all the negativity. No one without the firm finger of God would write it all down. I don't keep a careful record of my sins. Sometimes I whisper them aloud to God, sometimes to another person, but as far as carefully writing them down so that someone could go read them all later over and over and over and over, not so much. No king would submit to this kind ofactivity without God's miraculous work. And yet what a comfort. The pages and pages of seeming chaos and devestation are neither of those things. They are within the provident care of the person superintending their documentation.

Five

I'm really sad about the Mozilla Firefox guy being pushed out, or resigning, probably a little bit of both. It's interesting to me that every time something like this happens, the half of the country that is conservative and sometimes Christian react with shock. How could this happen! being the general refrain. Well, it could happen because it happend a few weeks ago with something else and something before that and so it will go on happening. We sit like dumbfounded cattle, ready for the slaughter and the fire, sure that at some point everyone will really wake up and make it stop. But that doesn't seem to be the way it's going.

Six

In the meantime, weirdly, Good Shepherd is spreading out like a beautiful tree planted by streams of living water. Big glorious classrooms, a garden, people starting ministries with energy and vision, bands of roving children banging on the piano, changing the organ settings, smearing food all over everything, plus other people's nice children too.

Seven

And now I should arise and go forth face the rain, and the girls squabbling downstairs over who gets to make toast, and then the boys wandering in from Man's Bible Study, stuffed with soda and white flour, and the messy school room because I didn't straighten up after school yesterday, and the trashed living room because a whole bunch of kids appear to have played on the xbox while I was doing The Lord's work at church, and the long Holy Week to do list…. Have a great weekend!