Thinking on these things . . .

(I speak as an adopted child, not an adoptive parent so if my suppositions are not accurate I apologize.) There are no unplanned adoptions. There are children from unplanned pregnancies, or pregnancies that were more or less intentional and then, those children who've resulted from a very intentional desire to have a child. Adoption can be like the choice to get pregnant; there is this desire for a child and action towards that end and then the uncertainty of how things are developing. A pregnancy however is usually a set amount of time, a certain procedure whereas an adoption hasn’t this set time frame and involves from start to finish many deliberate actions The one thing though that all pregnancies have in common and that is that pretty much when your child is born – you have a child. Period. There are no “call backs”, no return policy, no Plan B. You are now a parent and have both the privilege and responsibility of taking care of this person. My mom had told me about when I ca...

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July 6th – Get this sudden idea about having a huge neighborhood wide Back To School Bash on a Sunday afternoon all around the outside of the church campus. -Pitch it to the deacons, am given a thousand dollar budget and offers of help July – August 31 - Plan games - Choose and order appropriate and budget friendly prizes - Make ten separate visits to various stores for school supplies at the lowest possible prices Sunday - Sep. 7 - Have a massive sign-up list in church and 28 people agree to give up their afternoon and help - Answer the question “what will we do if it rains?” with a confident “If God could cause the sun to shine for Joshua an additional 24 hours so that he could win the battle, surely He can make it not rain on Sunday afternoon” Mon – Friday – Make massive lists of details still be to attended to - Rent popcorn machine, hot dog steamer, inflatable, arrange for tents - Buy massive quantities of popcorn and hot dogs - Watch the forecast predicting rain all week - Answer...

I have to say that one of my favorite attributes of God is His constant presence. God doesn't occasionally "pop" into my life to check out how things are going but He abides with me; there in every moment. Because we are constantly in the presence of God He uses the ordinary things in our lives to draw our attention to Him. In essence this is the theme of everything I write - God in our everyday stuff. Today God used a TV dinner to bring me into grateful worship. I had warmed one up for lunch and it was...well, it was a frozen dinner - could have better, probably could have been worse...and I thought about how I never buy these dinners anymore but how for a year I bought a stack every couple of weeks. My mom had fallen and broken her hip and the best I could do in a culinary way was to make sure her fridge was full of food that was easy to get to and prepare. So there was lots of yogurt, oatmeal, applesauce and simple things, and a stack of frozen dinners - all varieties,...

I'm not going to answer this question. And notice that I am not asking 'Why do people go to church?' or 'Why should you go to church?"; the question is 'Why do YOU go to church?' This was a question I wrestled with most of the summer. I know the "correct" answer but what I needed to know was my own personal answer; the completely honest answer that God already knows and perhaps I have kept hidden from myself. I will tell you that the first answer that came to my mind was "because it would feel weird not to". My second thought was "now that's a rotten answer", but it was true. I've gone to church all my life so to sit home consistently on a Sunday morning would feel pretty strange. But is that enough of a reason? I lead an adult Sunday school class and we vary greatly in how many people are there any given Sunday, which of course leads to the discussion of how do we get people to come to Sunday school? It's obviou...