Here and Now

found online We finally made it - Lori's favorite restaurant. We had made plans to go a dozen times over the past four years - each time the plans fell through... It's too far, it's too expensive, we don't have time... I had elaborate plans on our anniversary this past year that at the eleventh hour got sunk... and we didn't go... But we finally made it on the way home from Lori's grandmother's funeral. Not the most auspicious of occasions, I'll admit, and it was a detour from going to Farmer's Inn with the girls (we didn't go there because of the rain...) and several literal detours later...we finally sat down. It was just how I remembered it. Small town Italian restaurant, friendly enough staff, not-quite-ready-for-the-magazines decor... The physical menu had changed, but the contents didn't seem to have. Didn't matter, we'd order the same thing. Could be gone twenty years and I'd order the same thing: spaghetti and me...

Morgufile I read this quote from St. Augustine: "Hope has two beautiful daughters.  Their names are Anger and Courage.  Anger that things are the way they are.  Courage to make them the way they ought to be." Jim Denison of  the Denison Forum  quoted it in an enewsletter I get. It struck a chord with me, though. How often do I hear people who are mad about the way things are...but that's it. We are a nation that is, generally, all talk. We spout opinions like they matter somehow. Like our angry words are somehow going to reshape the world... Now don't get me wrong - words are powerful... I'm in the wrong business - heck, I'm in the wrong FAITH if I didn't believe that. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word with God, and the Word was God." I don't take that lightly... Nor the fact that God SPOKE and everything came into being. Or that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17) Are we ready, though, t...

Found Online So I'm in a new place - physically. It it a strange thing to deal with moving as a pastor - you celebrate your ministry, you are mourning leaving where you have been, yet you are excited about moving to new opportunities and challenges that God has for you. It's not like any other job move that I've made. When I left teaching, it was for a calling into the ministry - it was definitive, it was a clear ending of one path of my life and a new journey was beginning. When I left some of the "lesser" jobs, it was even easier - I worked in the restaurant industry for six or seven years when I was young - started as a dish washer, ended up what amounted to the night manager* at this family owned restaurant - but as much as I love restaurant work, that wasn't the life for me and I knew it and when I quit, as hard as it was to say good bye to Bernie and the others, I knew I was moving forward. Working construction, working as a baker and at the deli, my...