Wound
I went to Kim's church last night. Even though Kim and I were looking after 4 young, busy kids, it was an awesome time. It was like God was having a party.
When I went to bed that night, it was like my mind was blocked from the downward spiral it sometimes takes as I settle in for the night. It was like all I could think about was God's presence. When I woke in the morning, it felt like I saw a wound and that I had filled the wound with some blue paste. I had filled the wound with things that made it feel better for a time, but it was not God. It felt like God was ripping all the goop out. I need to fill the wound with Him. I so want to do this.
Hygiene
I've lived with a number of gals and they all were very serious about personal hygiene and we never shared anything in the category of personal hygiene items. However, we had a houseguest recently who had a different mindset towards this and had no qualms about using my stuff. It made me feel uncomfortable and I threw out the stuff she used. Am I crazy? Isn't personal hygiene meant to be personal?
For such a time as this
I have been so swamped with work and sometimes wonder if I should be working so much. Shouldn't I spend more time doing things that really matter, like time with James, prayer, etc. But I feel God has opened these doors, maybe for such a time as this!
Community
When I first became a Christian, I spent 4 months with my best friends' Church before returning to Kingston for school.
This Church was big and had very active youth and young adult groups. We were 19-20 at the time, so a bit old for the youth and a bit young for the young adult, so we went to both. We spent a lot of time together. 2 services on sunday, 1 youth meeting , 1 young adult meeting, plus other activities during the week. pool parties. camping at the Elora Gorge. I knew a lot about these people. How they came to Christ. How couple's fell in love. I listened and learned a lot about God but for some reason I never really connected with the people. Maybe it was because I knew my stay was temporary. Maybe because I am hard to connect with. Maybe because I didn't have much in common with them. Maybe that they thought my best friend and I were exclusive friends. I don't know. But I do know that even being in community, even if you aren't really connected with any people in particular is a form of safety.
Giving
This is another story from the little Church I went to.
We were a small Church and we knew each other, I thought, pretty well. We did a lot of stuff together. But we did lose people to divorce or whatever and in general I did not see it coming. At the time, I seemed to be oblivious to the fact that humans had failings.
There was one man there in his 50s who came in from Deseronto with another family that was from there. I knew he was having financial problems. He was heating his house with his stove. And one day he told me that if he didn't get his rent his landlord would kick him out. There was a lot more to this story that I learned after, but the obvious thing to me was that I had the money, so I wrote him a check for the next time that I saw him. When I gave it to him he looked all surprised, like God had told me that he needed the money. But I said no that last week HE had told me. So he took the cheque, said he would pay me back, but I think he still got kicked out his house. Afterwards, the people of the church were talking and said that the pastor had gone out there and he had been hiding a woman at his place and had been drinking. And he had a fight with the pastor and then he didn't come back, except for once and he said he'd give me the money back. I said not to worry about it. He didn't pay the money back and I never really expected him too. I was sad that he wasn't at the Church anymore, but happy that God arranged it that I could give him a parting gift, even if he never thought of it that way. As maybe his pride felt he should pay me back.
A few months later I got a scholarship from a group at Queen's in the exact amount of the cheque that I wrote the guy for rent. So I gut paid back another way.
Follow up
I only just checked the comments, I didn't type in my email notification address so I hadn't been getting them in my email.
So then I was trying to pray about the prayer letter and I'm thinking about this instead. My pastor totally had a good heart and was very against divorce. But a lot of couples from that Church ended up divorced. Go figure. The Church itself ended up scattered when it closed. And he was right that God loves unity, but we just didn't seem to have the tools to make it happen.
But I wonder about myself. When I feel God tells me to do something but can I hear Him say stop? Like Jared said in June, we need to keep our acceptance of death handy (get off a dead horse). Maybe I should have left, but that was never an option for me. I was too committed and I knew they all did love me in their own way. It all worked out in the end. The Church closed a few weeks before Next opened. One door closed and another one opened.
But that message he spoke that day, I still remember where I was sitting and how embarrassed I was. Why is it that we remember so well the bad and not the good?
