Stories and other stuff

Yesterday morning, I woke up and turned the radio on for noise.  I always have the radio in the bedroom set for 95.5 (BBN Radio).  The program that was on is called "Let My People Think" and is hosed by Ravi Zacharias, who is a tremendously gifted speaker.  He was talking about Christians and how we've kind of gotten used to doing things for ourselves and not expecting God to show up at events, like even during the sermon at church. At church, before the sermon, the pastor asked if anything unusual happened to me in the last day.  I shook my head no, but that was about to change. God always shows up.  I wonder though, how many times we're too busy waiting on or working for what we want, that we forget to notice. I sometimes don't know what to make of the things I see in my life.  I mean that.  Honestly sometimes I just think they're there to be seen.  Other times, I'm convinced they mean something.  But as I listened to the sermon, I he...

I waited all day for the UPS guy to show up, and about five he finally did.  I collected up my tinker toys and my furnace parts and proceeded to the basement.  They're installed, but not without incident. I own an air driven angle drill.  And a compressor.  They live in the garage.  Or did.  They're now taking up space in the basement, mostly because I'm too tired to move them to the garage.  I needed the angle drill to put new mount holes in the furnace for the new blower motor, which works just fine.  Unfortunately, it's a temporary fix.  I think it's time for a new furnace.  It'll make it the rest of the season, but in the spring and summer, I need to save up what little money I can to replace it. Because I needed the angle drill, I went to the garage to get the compressor and wheel it downstairs.  As Miss June and I rounded the corner of the house, we heard this unbelievably loud mewing coming from under one of our bushes. ...

So hopefully you read the last post.  If you didn't stop and read it before you read this one. On Wednesday evening, we were on our way to Logan when the young man who I was taking to see his mom for Thanksgiving looked up and noticed the car in front of us was from Indiana. I said nothing. Last night, I took a picture of Miss June and posted it to Facebook. When I got home from dropping said young man off at the Greyhound terminal in SLC this morning, this is what I came home to: Quite often, my life is too odd for words, but in God's providence, Miss June will find out about some sad news about her bestie.  Her and Judy were besties, but the old lady can't keep a cell phone for five minutes.  They wouldn't talk for months and then talk for hours on end.  I'm gonna hate telling her the news, but it's an example of how God can use anything to accomplish His purposes.

God works providentially in my life. By that I mean it's a co-mingling of circumstances, timing, and divine appointments that lend themselves to me, and sometimes others, seeing the I AM at work in my life.  I'm in awe and often left speechless by the things that happen. It can be hard to believe sometimes.  Sometimes I don't even believe it.  Of late, I'm praying that God will do something to help those close to me see that where I think I'm headed is the direction He wants me going in.  Although I don't understand it myself sometimes because I can't even begin to apply human understanding to it, I think it would be helpful to me to have the people I count on the most for advice and wisdom to be on the same page. At dinner last night, we were talking about Shetland ponies.  My uncle Bob (former uncle, my aunt is my mother's sister) had horses when I was a boy and he told me to stay off the Shetland pony.  My cousins talked me into riding it.  It...

On Thursday, we're going to have a feast here at Lark Circle.  It's not gonna be like an old-tyme king's feast, but just the same, we're having a feast.  We've much to celebrate this year and it's time to just have a feast in remembrance and honor of the God who provides. I see Him in the preparations for this feast.  It started with His hand in providing the very plates we'll be using, both at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The Pfaltzgraff has been replaced (wrote about this earler) and we have an abundance of place settings for the feast.  I'm borrowing some tables and chairs from the church for the feast as well. Over the last few weeks, I've been shopping for the feast.  Some stores have better prices on this vs. that, and I shop around.  Our dinner this year comes from Macey's, Winco, Smith's, and the Commissary.  Macey's is the only store I know of that carries the frozen squash for the soup and has better produce than the others....

So, God answers prayers. My friend's wife was in the hospital with some internal bleeding.  He mentions it on Facebook and asks for prayers for her.  Several hours later, she was home.  The source of the bleeding stopped, in his words..."on it's own". Or maybe with help?  Often times, we look for prayers and then forget to acknowledge when they're answered.  Several friends prayed for healing and it took place....however it took place, on its' own or with some intervention from above.  Prayers answered. She's resting at home which is a blessing. So my mom gave me a car. I've been praying over my old truck.  I had to buy some wire to wire the two halves of the catalytic converter heat shield together.  The welds at the back cracked and it deployed like a flap on an airplane wing.  I need things to last sixteen more months or so.  The other day I asked God to please just glue everything together for the next 16 months. He bless...

OK, so a lot of things are on my mind today.  It's Veterans' Day.  I'm a veteran, but I'm not a combat veteran.  It wasn't my job to get shot at.  My job was to fix planes that delivered gas to planes that delivered bombs on the guys shooting at the guys whose job it was to get shot at.  We all have a part to play but I can't and won't compare my service to the real heroes.  I just did my job. And I did a good job, because when I left they got along fine without me.  That means I trained up the people to take my place.  The show went on.  It was supposed to.  And when the guys that I hired move on to the next stop in their lives, that show will go on.  It's supposed to.  I have every faith that it will. I got out at the right time for me.  When I had to as a Chief Master Sergeant, "When did an ass chewing cease to be an effective management tool in the United States Air Force?", I knew my days were numbered.  A co...

OK, so you're skeptical.  You read about all this stuff that I say happens to and around me and you just don't believe half of it.  If you have any sanity about you, you don't anyway.  Often times I don't believe what does. Tonight's post is about Facebook.  Facebook is cool because when you share stuff, it time-stamps things, so you can verify for yourself that I'm not ready for the funny farm. I have a FB friend named Bruce, and if your news feed is like mine, you'll see posts your friends like.  Tonight, Bruce "liked" a picture of a yellow and white old Chevy pickup truck.  The only reason I saw the pic is because he liked it.  It's not a page I look at because for starters, the Coops are a Ford family.  Or a Hyundai family, or OK, whatever the hell we can afford family.  But I love my Ford pickup. The truck has, and I kid you not, Oregon plates. Of course it does. The last couple of posts have been about things I didn't see co...

As we walked out of the Intensive Care Unit, Pastor K turned to me and asked me "In the seven or whatever years ago when you first walked into my office when you and Wendi got married, did you ever think you'd be doing hospital visits and praying for people?" Um.  No, I never saw that coming. A couple of guys from the Rescue Mission are ill.  We missed them at Bible study this morning so we went and saw them afterward. I've learned to not expect anything in any given day because I just never know what's coming next.  Sometimes, what comes is an affirmation of something; just a little way to know God is here, in the rainy season. We were talking about Acts today at Bible study, and how a sorcerer named Simon offered to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit this morning and and wondered if the sorcerer was planning to use giving the gift of the Holy Spirit as a way to enrich himself.  The Holy Spirit came upon believers that Peter and John laid their hands upon an...

For all the things I do see in and around my life, sometimes the most obvious ones escape detection. I was a bit upset last month by something that happened, but with a couple of weeks of hindsight, I see the many ways God used that for good in my life.  That and reading a book that forced me to take a timely assessment of my life kind of showed me something I didn't see before. I struggle financially.  That's not a news flash.  But when I looked at my finances and looked at some of the programs on the TV in my home, I kind of thought it was time to make a change.  As for me, I watch mostly old movies, sports, and MSNBC.  There are other things on the tube though and it's easy to overlook what exactly some of the content is by saying, "well I don't watch those programs." Looking at my finances, I began to see that if I'm paying for TV while asking God to lead me to a place of being more obedient with my finances, then I need to be willing to sac...