Grace-period

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Deuteronomy 6:7 KJV My grandfather went home to be with Jesus yesterday.  My grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher for as long as I can remember.  I know he had a "former life."  He had been an electrician at a local factory and in the navy before that, but I don't remember him as anything but a preacher. When I was a child, I would go to church with my grandparents and my great-grandmother. While I would guess my mother probably had many struggles as a pastor's kid, for the most part, I enjoyed being a pastor's granddaughter.  Sure, you were expected to set an example, but I was already used to that as the eldest daughter and granddaughter.  There were wonderful benefits to being in the family.  In the first church I knew him to pastor, my grandfather took me up...

I just arrived home after attending a very sweet bridal shower.  The bride-to-be is giddy with excitement, and altho I would not say the groom-to-be is giddy, he is certainly eagerly looking forward to the coming day.  Her excitement made the air of the party electric, and it was impossible not to be effected.  I thought of my own wedding, how good it has been to be married, and how much more I love him today than I did when we said our vows.  Turning back to the shower, I wondered if she might think the same thing in their future. All the bridal giddiness made me think about how I respond to God, of course.  You see the association, right?  Yeah, me neither, until I heard some interesting thoughts this past week on how we relate to God.  I can't remember who or when or where, but it changed the way I prayed.  Altho confession and repentance are good things, we also need to walk into, and in, the love God offers.  The thought w...

I have been taking a break...from a lot of my life.  It is easy to become overwhelmed with the daily treadmill of life, you know-work to run home and, well, work so that you can fight to get to sleep so you can get up and start all over again.  This seems to be particularly true with all our technology that is supposed to help us stay connected, even when we should probably disconnect, at least once in a while.  (Maybe that weekly Sabbath that God suggested????) Feeling emptied by my run on the treadmill, I decided to stop, to take a break, to close shop for a little.  I changed my routine activities and some relationships.  To be honest, I needed to face up to the fact that I wasn't much good to anyone constantly running on empty but distracted by the buzz of a schedule to keep and constant chattering of people around me. Sometimes the quiet is unsettling.  I want to be distracted from my reality, the unfinished business I have been working on, or...