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Catching up with my interests

So it’s been a couple months since I was blogging. A friend, now living and on-mission in another country mentioned that he read a little of my blog lately. Too bad I haven’t kept up-to-date.

So here’s some of my obsessive joys going on lately:

Baptism:  First of all I just had a terrific conversation with my oldest child. She will be baptized soon! She became a Christian about a year ago at camp. She’s just been to camp again and we feel that it’s time. We are so pleased.

www.conquerclub.com: For a couple years now, me and some guys get together for a game night of Risk. Conquerclub is an online version where you play with others over a period of days or could be weeks. I’ve really enjoyed it lately and I also get lots of help with strategy from a group of online mentors.

Brother Lawrence: Last week I was preaching on worshipping in the presence of the Lord. In my research I came across Brother Lawrence’s Practicing the Presence of God.  It is in the public domain, and I printed some copies for church members.  Bro. Lawrence’s thing is that he disciplined his mind and heart to recognize that he was in the presence of the Lord even while he was doing the routine business of kitchen work for example.  The book is short and excellent.  Read it online or print a copy for yourself.

Hair Cutting:  I’m cutting my own hair now with clippers.  I think it looks good and I’m enjoying the savings.  For instance two months have gone by now since I got it clipped at the barber’s.  And I’ve clipped it myself twice now.  So I’ve saved the $12 cost I normally paid about every 5 weeks.  Well I supposed that pays for the cost of the clippers, but from here on out it’s total savings!  I don’t know why most guys don’t do this.  We started doing it with our three year old son, and I was curious if we couldn’t do it with me too. 

Hummingbirds.  My in-laws moved and out of the many things that we got from them, including a swwweeeet big tv, was a hummingbird feeder.  From the time I put it outside, we had several birds.  They are really wonderful to watch.  I highly recommend getting a feeder and putting it in a place near a window in your living room.

Poetry of the Father’s forgiveness

During my study of the subject of forgiveness in the New Testament book of Philemon, I was captivated by the following poem included in John MacArthur’s commentary. It makes me think of my son and my heavenly Father, and it makes me sad that we don’t forgive as we should.

“The Toys” by Coventry Patmore, a nineteenth-century English poet (citied in The MacArthur New Testament Commentary on Colossians & Philemon, 1992, Moody Bible Institute of Chicago)

My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,
I struck him, and dismiss’d
With hard words and unkiss’d,
–His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of [tokens] and a red-vein’d stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French copper coins, ranged there
with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray’d
To God, I wept and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with [tranquil] breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou has moulded from the
clay,
Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
“I [forgive] their childishness.”