We’ve landed on Mars! Check out news from the Phoenix Mars lander.
A recent study claims that kids in daycare have better immune systems than those with stay-at-home parents, possibly leading to a reduced likelihood of leukemia. See the New York Times article here.
This makes me feel a lot better about the various sicknesses that some of our church kids passed around recently. You see, as it turns out, going to church is good for kids’ immune systems! Do you think the New York Times will write about it? Maybe we should put it in our church visior brochure!
My wife woke me up for morning prayer this morning and I went back to sleep. This was a bad choice because there’s a lot going on in my life and the life of our church right now. As a church grows, it can no longer connect everyone “automatically.” It’s a much more conscious and deliberate thing. While our church has had many people come to try us out, not as many find their place these days, and that breaks my heart.
So last night, I was trying to figure out what “I need to do to fix this.” That usually leads me to a bad place emotionally and spiritually so I thought it would be great to get up early with Eleanor and pray. But I didn’t.
When I did get up, I was focused on all of the things everyone needed to do. But in the background of my mind was a message I hadn’t noticed. The kids at church had sung a song for Mother’s Day on Sunday, and it was running in the back of my mind, as a soundtrack for my own internal conversation. “Our God is a great big God. Our God is a great big God. Our God is a great big God and he holds us in his hands.”
God has a plan, and God will hold our church and me as we move ahead in the things that God has planned for us.
I was just reading Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening devotional for this evening, and it referred to Job 22:21. In the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version), it says, “Agree with God, and be at peace; in this way good will come to you.” In the NIV (New International Version), it says, “Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.” The tricky part of the translation is the Hebrew verb SKN. In this stem, it seems to mean be reconciled with God.
I sure understand that. I don’t know what it is about me that makes me struggle against what God wants for me. I will have a sense that God is leading me in a particular direction and there’s a part of me that will immediately go the other direction. I did it in a big way when I was running away from the call to vocational ministry. Now I do it in smaller ways.
The common thread is that whatever God is calling me to is always better than the alternative plan I have in mind. Once I finally give up on fighting God, once I agree with or submit to or am reconciled withGod, there is peace. It always works out better too. Even when I can’t figured out how it could possibly work out beforehand.
Maybe you can be wiser than I am: ”Agree with God, and be at peace; in this way good will come to you.”
Last week, I attended a “round table” of sexual assault survivors and members of the clergy. The honesty of the six women who had survived sexual assault was extraordinary – and extremely difficult to hear. But the hardest part of what they had to say was the part about how their churches had treated them. The horrible things pastors, counselors, and church friends had told these women. If you have time, please take a look at my church newsletter post in the Trinity blog and leave your comments. I think it’s time to shine a light on this whole area in the church, let go of our denial, learn how to treat people as they should be treated, and bear witness to the love and grace of God for sexual assault survivors.
In Memoriam
Oscar Myra Mendoza Whitney (Myra)
1994-2008
Last night (April 30), our long-haired miniature dachshund, Myra escaped from the back yard. When we realized it late last night, I went searching for her in the neighborhood and after about 45 minutes, found her across Jefferson Blvd. (a busy, highway-like street with 4 lanes). She had been hit by a car and killed – instantly from the looks of it.
Myra has been with Eleanor and me for 14 years (9 of them before we had any children). When Eleanor and I had known each other for just three years, Myra joined our family. We’ve lived in five different places together, and it’s really hard to see her go. We knew that she would die one day – maybe even soon – but this sudden, violent death is a little hard to deal with.
I thought it would be fitting to offer a Myra retrospective here. She got her name because I insisted that if we got a tiny little dog, she would need a joke name. Hence she was christened Oscar Myra Wienerdog – Myra for short and O. Myra on official documents. The pictures below capture a bit of who she was. In order, there are a picture of her as a puppy from an early 1994 webcam in my Silicon Graphics office, Myra’s glamour shot taken by a fellow student while we were in seminary, Myra on the beach, Myra the french fry (any human food, really) thief, Myra the measuring stick that tracked the growth of all three of our children as babies, and finally a white-muzzled Myra in 2008, exhausted after Johnny’s little friends went home from his birthday party.
Now we’ll finally have to learn how to clean up food spills around the table, and I’ll have to figure out how to keep myself company after the kids go to sleep. The house just seems a little bit darker and less friendly tonight.
Myra, you were a member of our family. We will miss you.
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