Stories and other stuff

My roomie and I attend the same church.  It's how we met.  We keep different schedules and have different interests, but get along well.  For all the differences there are between us, and they are many, we live lives on a parallel track.  It's sometimes like we're both on our own lines, but they're headed in the same direction.  For instance, he broke his toe and I hurt my back. It just kind of rolls that way sometimes.  Anyway, sometimes we sit in the same pew.  Today was one of those times and I had a brief minute to share what the reason was that I pretty much lost my Who over.  For a man who has destroyed his life in the past by his inability to keep his pants on, the irony of ironies is that my Who's (my being strictly for identification and not used in the possessive tense) biggest problem she has with me is that I won't sleep with her. OK, so here's the quandary.....do you do something you've always done to get what you want (not like i...

You know you miss the salad days of the blog....the ones where I used to tell you all the stuff that was going on in my life.  And then I started just dropping hints, or perhaps, not even that.  I haven't written with any regularity recently.  I did tell you the stuff that went on with the people that crossed my path at the Rescue Mission.  I don't know if that's a foreboding of things to come.  I don't think so. I had the oddest dream the other night.  It started with me being in the woods with a woman.  I picked up this log and heaved it over the top of a ridge.  Then I thought I ought not have done that because I didn't know what was on the other side.  I walked up to the ridge and saw a tall thin man wearing a hat walking on a path.  I missed hitting the man.  He gave me a dirty look and just kept walking the path. Then some other weird stuff happened that I don't remember and then I was back in the woods and this time I pic...

So I was going to start writing about a pity party someone was having that travels in my circles but isn't directly involved with my life.  We all have pity parties, for whatever reason.  We feel sorry for ourselves and want others to feel it too. It's tough to read about because I see someone who is looking for something that doesn't exist this side of Glory; the perfect church.  I spent 3 decades away from church and my excuse was that I didn't much care for the way Christians treated other Christians.  I was right about that.  I was wrong to blame the church. Churches are made up of flawed human beings who make mistakes.  To me, it's one of the things I've come to cherish about my church.  Not everything works out right all the time.  Sometimes it just makes me know I have a home where I worship.  And sometimes, something pretty sweet comes out of the mistake.  Last week, we sang a song that has extra music to it that's not in the...

Today's blog post is written with one supposition in mind:  That nothing happens in the life of a Christian by accident.  There are no coincidences.  There is no luck.  Random isn't.  I believe that God still has His hand on creation, that He's still very much involved in the day-to-day of His children's lives.  I don't claim to know the why things happen, though, nor even understand half of what does.  Often times, I just go with it and not try to over-think it. As some of you know, I've been very blessed to be asked to help facilitate a Bible study on Wednesday mornings at the Ogden Rescue Mission.  Aside from providing temporary housing, the mission supports an in-resident program to help people with substance abuse problems re-start their lives.  It's a year long program. One of the first lessons I've learned about this program is that people come and people go.  I suppose it's just part of the deal.  Sometimes the help they...

I operate in life by making basic assumptions about things.  One of those things is that if you're attempting to do a relatively simple job on a car, you have some sort of clue about what you're doing.  I get that not every person is blessed with mechanical ability.  I am, to some point, but not to the extent of a lot of people I know.  For instance, I'm not the guy you're gonna call to hang your kitchen cabinets.  I can, though, and have learned out of sheer necessity, how to do stuff around the house, which comes in handy. I have been working on Miss June's hoopdie.  The brake pedal goes all the way to the floor and after bleeding the brakes on the car, it still did.  Following the natural progression of car maintenance, and understanding that someone had changed the brake pads on the car, and with the help of the interweb, I determined that the brake master cylinder was bad. I'm glad I changed it, because it was full of gunk and crud and brake f...

I fear God.  I love God.  I cannot understand God....except that I can.  Kind of. I'm starting to understand what Sovereign is...and I turned to the Bible for my lesson.  If you read the book of Esther, (c'mon, it'll take you all of about a half-hour to read it!) nowhere will you find one single mention of God.  Not one place is God's name used.  But boy, is God there! The story orchestrates itself into a manifestation of how God uses the humble to defeat the proud.  It shows attributes of God at work.  It shows how God uses the powerful to accomplish His purposes.  It shows those willing to look that God is indeed Sovereign. I re-read it yesterday because I'm trying to understand how God is moving in my life.  I'm trying to make sense of things that I just don't have the human capacity to understand.  I just have hope that the outcome I'm expecting is the one He has planned.  Who can know the mind of God? But I can kno...

So, in the land of crazy, not much is happening right now.  Sorry for the silence but unless you'd enjoy a story about fighting to get the brakes fixed on Miss June's hoopdie, I got nothin'. Sort of. My life is still a mess; moreso than it's been for a while.  I can't remember a time in the last two years that money has been this tight.  Hopefully, some overtime will correct that situation and I can get caught back up.  Hopefully.  I've really been watching my spending and I should have just enough to pay what needs to be paid and just enough for gas to work for the next five days.  I have to work tomorrow.  I don't want to.  I HAVE to, and not by edict of my employer. So thankful for that opportunity.  It's gonna pay for some used tires for my truck.  Just enough to get by.  That's all I need. I did manage to spray the apple trees just now.  The pool is cleaned out and I rinsed off the filter.  It's good to go for...