Throw Up Thursday

I keep thinking I should go through my archives and republish stuff from the past, stuff that was probably interesting, stuff that shouldn't be lost forever. Some day I will move all that stuff over here, under some kind of tab. That will be the same day I send nasty and carefully crafted letters to all the people who are generating spam and trying to dupe me into putting it on my blog, to let them know how I feel about them personally and the measure to which I hope God will judge them in eternity–a lot, I hope he will judge them a lot. But republishing stuff from the archives means going back and reading it and getting to see what kind of bilge I was contributing to the general pollution of the internet all those years. I'm just not up to it. There might have been a gem here or there, but who knows.

Anyway, Elphine, with her foul cold, just threw up because of coughing so much. And Alouicious is lying at the end of my bed whining and complaining. He piled a lot of dirty dishes in the sink last night and then came in and said with a straight face that the kitchen was “done”, but not in any real sense “done”, not like the finished work of Christ “done”. So I went in and dismantled his “finished work” and showed him point by point the errors of his own judgement. Neither of us enjoyed it. Maybe today he'll stop complaining about everything but I doubt it. It looks like he also might be falling before the plague.

All these are a great comfort to me–the piles of work, the extraordinary stresses that are brewing and fomenting in the church, the sicknesses of the children, the new fresh hell I discover in some corner every day. As each day mounts in stress and drama my mind settles just a little bit more into comfort and quiet than it did the day before. How can this be so, you ask? Well, because God is provident. Two months ago when we 'decided' that taking our usual month of holiday in July was just not feasible, we did not see or know all the little things that really need coping with now, this very moment. I did not know that I would have an enormous twelve year old lying around coughing and sputtering in my face. I did not know that I would need to settle in and deal with some big tasks that shouldn't wait longer. I find myself grateful at the closing of each day, that God is arranging and ordering the circumstances and work in ways I had No Idea they would be ordered and arranged. Sure, the work right now is very hard. The tasks are not ones I love. The sense of precarious futility looms very close. But strangely also, The Lord is perceptibly close at hand, not far off, but close, rumbling and shaking the earth and all that near me dwells.

So I've come to a point of Less Fussing. I have Cheered Up, because I'm pretty sure things are going to get worse before they get better. I am Optimistic about eventual judgement of God upon the earth. He really does care. We cannot be so wicked and he not do something about it. It's a comfort to see him doing something, it is a rest to see that the work needs doing, it is a joy to see his action and help in the smallest, darkest places.

And on that note, I'm going to put a load of throw up laundry in the washer and make a list of things I probably won't end up doing. Have a lovely day!