Peace Not As The World Gives

"Do I truly feel at peace with myself, based on the choice I made to try and embrace the Church's teaching?  Here's the honest answer:  I suppose I feel as much peace in my life as a marathon runner does in the middle of a race."

          ~ Nathaniel Jameson (Daniel Mattson) - Running the Race - It Ain't Necessarily Easy

Dr. Laura

When I was growing up, my Dad would often listen to Dr. Laura on the radio whenever we would drive places.  I remember being struck by how forthright she would be with callers.

It's funny, the only actual content that I remember from the radio show was when a male caller called and asked for advice on whether or not he should wait until he was more financially stable to marry his girlfriend.  Dr. Laura asked him what he meant by "financially stable" and the man replied, "I was hoping to have a $100,000 bank before we got married."  I then remember Dr. Laura going off on homie about how that was actually a lot of money and that it would take a really long time to save that much given the man's current salary.  Like most callers, she ripped him a new one.

For some reason, that has stuck with me ever since and I was reminded it of it tonight when I was going over family finances and appreciating Dr. Laura's words (in this case).

Question

"Where did we get this idea that marriage was so fragile and our teenage children were so needy that adding one more baby to the mix would make it all fall apart?"

          ~ Abigail

Emergency? Or Just A Regular Church Meeting?

Depends on your perspective.

After living in our house for over a year, there was only one immediate neighbor that we still hadn't met...until today.

We've always been a little reluctant to go out of our way to meet them because there is sometimes loud swearing and arguing coming from the house.

Well, we finally met the woman that lives there and she told us that one time, she thought something really bad had happened at our house because she saw all these cars parked outside and then a priest pulled up and walked in.

To our neighbor, a priest equals emergency.  To us, that's just another regular old monthly church meeting.

Cleaning Up

When I was in college, my roommate and I intentionally moved into a dorm known for hard partying in order to start a small group Bible Study there.

Hard partying in college usually means to the point of getting sick.  Living in a college dorm usually means the janitorial staff doesn't clean the bathrooms on weekends.  You get the picture.

Sometimes we couldn't even use the bathroom all weekend because the stench of stale vomit on the floors of the bathroom stalls or even the showers were so overwhelming that they threatened to cause another episode (I'm getting the urge to dry-heave just from the memories).

So while living in this dorm, one of the ways my roommate and I tried to actively live out our faith was, you guessed it, to clean up the bathroom whenever it was defiled.

The conversations we had and the looks we got ranged from disgust to sympathy to confusion to admiration.

The act itself sucked (whenever I would smell the stench from the bathroom walking up to my room, I would try and not make eye contact with my roommate when I walked in the door), but I learned a lot from the experience.

But one of the fruits I am currently enjoying from that experience is that cleaning up my daughter's poop, even scraping creamy corn carrot chunk poop off a cloth diaper, is a total cake-walk.

Who says following Jesus isn't practical?

Smooth and Slimy

Politicians who are smooth and charismatic public speakers are extremely persuasive.

So are pastors and clergy.

But sometimes there is a subtle sliminess quality.  It probably partly has to do with jadedness from high-profile public moral failures.