Day Thirty-Two I Kings 19:3 Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. Elijah, the great and mighty prophet of God, at whose call the rain stops and whose hand the prophets of Baal are brought to nothing, finds himself threatened by the power of a shrewd and wicked woman. She is ruthless. She is vindictive. She, with her painted eyes, is what... Read more
I'm covering myself over in paint this week. The classrooms at church went up just before Easter and were duly painted and moved into, and then we had the season of weddings which meant that the parish hall got a fresh coat, and then, well, you know, life is busy. Painting the new hallway just hasn't been the top of any list. But VBS is next week and it looks like the leader and organizer of it has everything all... Read more
Our whole professional lives have been defined by the Up and Down. Is the church doing well? Yes? Then we go Up. Is the church doing…well…you know…not badly, but, um…stressfully? Yes? Then we go Down. Up and Down. Up and Down. Like we're on one of those old seesaws you never see anymore. The pastor isn't supposed to go down, though. The pastor is supposed to be the even keel. The pastor, who am I kidding, IS the even keel.... Read more
Looks like we're settling in for a rainy day. The children are squabbling and shouting. Romulus is trying to make a World Cup out of femo and not particularly succeeding. Not being one to over inflate their egos, I just poured cold water on his belief in himself and told him he had to work on it a lot more before I'd be willing to turn on the oven. Earlier, well, yesterday, I let an older girl from church play... Read more
Day Thirty-One I Kings 17:12 And she said, “As The Lord lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” Your house is small and spare and clean. You have a table and a chair and some stones for a... Read more
One Every week, for the last four, I have thought, by Thursday afternoon, 'this has been an exceptionally hard week'. And then I go on to the next week and think it again. At what point does it stop being an exception and just count as regular hard and you just stop fussing about it? It's possible I've reached that point. Some hard things this week included our Red Car completely dying in the middle of Conklin Ave and Matt... Read more
I've actually just used up all my blogging time sifting through the mire of comment spam. I have been irritated by it and so just didn't look at it for weeks and weeks, in hopes that it would go away. But as it is so often, the opposite of that happened. Now I'm irritated with myself because I found a handful of nice and helpful comments that I never actually published, possibly because I never saw them, because I mostly... Read more
There's a big dark grey cloud threatening me as I sit here, catching up on a pile of email and trying to think through my week. The children, who cleaned the house so well on Saturday, have now completely dismantled it, Matt has lost his wallet, and I have lost a precious and important piece of paper. While looking for the wallet I found my hair cutting sissors, and a sock I really love, but that was all, tragically. Being... Read more
One I really love Memoria Press. I know I said I wouldn't talk curriculum, but, oh well, here I am playing the hypocrite. I really love Memoria Press for three, to channel Alouicious, reasons. First, it's layed out in a way that I am able to understand. Somehow, however it is that I think and conceive of reality is not upset every time I open a Memoria Press book. Their materials makes sense to me. This happens rarely in the... Read more
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... Read more
Preventing Grace
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