Grace-period

Brianna and Sabrina helping to decorate. The cake, delicious! SURPRISE! Good eats And presents. Family New Family-Jonathon, Tiersa, and Baby Tira Elizabeth

I switched my work schedule today so that I could go to the funeral. I can't say I wanted to go, but I wanted to let her know I cared. The pictures were beautiful. Tears flowed freely....for what was lost, for what would never be...and our fractured hearts begged God to care, to hold, to be.

"...you are dust, and to dust you shall return." -God Today the Lenten season begins. Doesn't anyone else find that quote depressing? Here in Pennsylvania Dutch country, everyone, Catholic or not, loves Shrove Tuesday (or Fat Tuesday) because of the fasnachts. (For anyone not from around here, these are donuts covered with sugar that people made to use up their sugar and such because the Lenten season was to be somber and not filled with treats.) But after the dough settles into a leaden ball in their bellies, most move on with their lives. Catholics stay for the ashes. Today I will encounter many people with a dirty smudge on their forehead. The priest dabs his thumb into the ashes and then he makes the sign of the cross on their head. People wear it like a badge today. "I got mine. Where's yours?" Or like some secret (not so secret when it is staring at me from your forehead) marking where you can identify your comrades. Of course today is also a fast day ...

I was supposed to be at Johns Hopkins today. A friend from recovery who has hepatitis that doesn't respond to treatment had his gall bladder go bad. The local docs wouldn't touch him because the surgery was extremely high risk due to his liver. They knew he might very well bleed to death on the table. Because he is hopefully getting a liver transplant (some day), the transplant docs down there were willing to do the surgery. I was supposed to be down there visiting him today. He wasn't supposed to be doing so well. He wasn't supposed to be out for a week so that they could watch for post op bleeding. But, he was coming home today and so we didn't go visit him. Instead, it seems that maybe God cut me some slack. Instead of visiting a sick friend in the hospital, I visited a sick friend in a halfway house. She had made some stupid choice and gotten herself kicked out and was being sent back to jail. I used to sponsor her tho I let her go because I couldn't help th...

My days are always good. It's my reactions that screw things up.

Father, I don't understand. You say you knit us together in our mothers' wombs, that you knew us before we were born... Did you knit her together? Did your stitches slip? Father, where were you? As I wait for my grand daughter's birth. the news of this other baby, the loss of her, it is particularly heart breaking. She wanted a girl for so long. But the girl you gave her was only for a flicker of time. How can I ask you to watch over my grand daughter? Did you watch over her child? Was it just a genetic chance? As her mother grieves, please hold her, comfort her, help her to feel your tears. More than the evil that hounds us, we fear you being indifferent, stepping over our messy lives, stepping out of them. Do not leave us here like this.

What is ministry? For so many of us, we just concede that ministry is how professional Christians make a living. We pay them to "minister." But what does that MEAN? I grew up a grandchild of a minister and so I thought I knew what that meant, but when I looked it up, ministry is simply the act of serving. Of course, one way to serve is thru "up front" ministry-serving as a pastor who teaches from a pulpit. However, there are many others who have a ministry. Today at our service this gentleman was being interviewed about finding contentment and at one point he spoke about his interactions with children that he teaches piano, that sometimes they need to talk about their lives and he listens and coaches there as well as the keys. His comment was something like, this is almost like a ministry. Sure sounds like it is one to me. A friend of mine started selling the cookies she bakes and with the profits she makes meals for people who are struggling, sick or sad, t...