Three Count Post!

"So I wanna live in a wooden house,
where making more friends would be easy.
I wanna live where the sun comes out"
-Coldplay "We Never Change"

(Yes, I know the song is about being okay with falling short without expectations of grace, which I believe we need. I just like the phrasing.)

Three days in a row. Can you tell I'm having trouble with a piece of architecture at work?

Actually, today is a request: pray for Sharon and I to have wisdom is deciding whether or not to send Asher to Kindergarten next year. His birthday is July, and he seems to not be quite ready socially/behaviorally, even though he's clearly ready academically. I don't know what we'd do with him if we don't send him that wouldn't just bore him to tears, but I also don't want him to dislike school because he gets in trouble for not paying attention.

Hopefully this decision (when it comes) will be easier with Micah, since he's an October birth.

The Life to Come

"I am going where the means of grace shall cease
where I need no more to fast or pray or seek"
-Christine Dente "Heaven Desired"

In many ways I despise my being, and especially this time of year because I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. There are times, however, when I realize that even this is blessing.

Growing up in the south I never knew about this, and when it first happened to me in Chicago I ran into it like a brick wall. I'm not gonna recount those times, but I know how God orchestrated that in my life by having the right Pastor and the right friends to teach me about rebirth.

If you don't live where snow must be plowed, let me explain something. Snow plows tear things up. After lots of snow (like we've had) melts off, the ground at the sides of the roads bear deep scars in places where the blade (not knowing the road had stopped and ground had begun) has been gouged. After all the gunk of dirty snow and freezing weather, that first winter in Chicago, it just seemed so unfair: look what terrible things all that snow does.

But later you can hardly tell what happened. The snow does, I don't know, something to the ground, and it seems like everything grows at once. The most depressing, patchy, goopy mess less than a month later has little grasses all over it, and two months later it's... I don't know... ground. Grass. Dirt. Wildflowers. Not damaged at all. Having grown up in cotton country you think I'd understand the plow metaphor, but it took something else in my life to get there.

Lent is well timed. Hints of rebirth appear from the shroud of snow (that image is cliche because it's so accurate) and the world... remembers.

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Wanna know another reason all this is in my head right now? Look at this Picasa Web Update.

Three Things, Four Things

"this is the way the morning creeps into your room
this is the sunshine on your orange juice
this is the sky streaked bright with the early light
and this is my way of telling you that you are beautiful"
-Annie Quick "Beautiful"

Three things fill me hope. Indeed four things portend joy:

• the smile of a five month old at his dancing brother
• snow retreating, defeated
• bright sun on sodden earth
• dreaming of April from one month away