Thursday's Thoughts ...

Here we go again, another Thursday following another Wednesday. I have now had two Wednesday nights in a row without a meeting following church, it felt good to get home before 9 o'clock. The negative was that my wife is gone. The good news is she is watching 4 of our grandchildren so that our son and daughter-in-law could get away for a couple of days. She is loves to do this, to be with the kids and to help the parents, it is part of what we envisioned when we were able to move closer to our kids. We used to be 8-11 hours away now we are 2-3 hours from all of them. She also got to spend a little time with our 5th grandchild, the one born 6 weeks ago today. I am glad that she can do this, but I miss her.

Our weather is now beginning to feel like spring, and it feels great. Since my wife is gone I am vehicleless (just made up that word) so I have been walking more and even rode a bike out to the bank today. It is my wife's bike, there was a lot of wind, and I am out of shape. My legs are killing me. (insert your own sympathetic phrase here)

I am really struggling with this Sunday's message. I feel some obligation to address the whole tragedy at Virginia Tech, but not sure about how to bring that into the direction in which God has been leading us. I sure don't want to mess up the momentum God has created, but don't want to miss an important opportunity either.

I had another encouraging encounter with someone today. They have had some limited contact the church, it has increased recently, and the response from them today was very positive. They were thankful for some recent encouragement I had given and were very positive about attending our church again. We have been having a couple visits each month recently from people who were just showing up. No real urging by anyone, just heard about things and wanted to check us out. The grapevine about us in the community is turning toward the positive. That is awesome!

Here's hoping you are enjoying the weather where you are and realizing that God is still God no matter the weather. Here's hoping you can find some encouragement today. Here's hoping that I don't make too big of a mess while my wife gone, and that what I do mess up I will get cleaned up before she returns.