Words from Pastor ANdrew
Selah
It’s not uncommon that we like to play misery poker. We try to one up one another with our health problems, our family drama, how ridiculous a co-worker is, how unreasonable an in-law is, how terrible our day has been and on and on. This one upping to see who is more miserable is really a terrible way to pass time…and unfortunately this is something most of us will do left to our own devices. I have had conversations with my kids where their day is a bit off…and they immediately start looking for how difficult school is and how mean the bus driver was and how they don’t have a certain piece of technology…and on and on. Many of us start at our worst…and look for things to get worse. We start down and go downward.
To Restore
I recently borrowed a pressure washer from someone. When I started to rinse off an area on the side of my house that had mud and grime, stuff started to come off that I didn’t even know was there. Stains that had tinted the grout around the bricks. Dirt that had found its way into the crevices of the exterior of the house. And more stuff started to fall away from the cleansing water that I didn’t even realize was making my house dirty. I felt so accomplished after I finished one side of my house…that I started to work on the fence.
Fake Fall
We are living in fake fall. It’s not real fall. Fall doesn’t start until…wait for it…Thursday, September 22nd. That is a month from now…and yet we are in the midst of fake fall. Pumpkin and cinnamon things are sneaking into our grocery carts and coffee orders. Our pineapple and coconut have been prematurely traded for pumpkin and chai. People are growing out their facial hair…maybe that is just me…and assessing their flannel and boots. We claim an 85 degree morning that is overcast as that cool fall air. We see (and buy) apple orchard soap, fall farmers market candles, and crisp autumn morning wax melts. Just for clarity, all of those things smell lovely as soap, candles, and wax melts…but they smell nothing like the actual thing. Apple orchards smell like…well…I’m not sure what they smell like…but probably not cinnamon apple sauce soap.
Cloffice
I have an office at home that Sarah built into a closet. It’s my “cloffice”. It’s a thing on Pinterest. Google it. Now the nice thing about having a “cloffice” is that it doesn’t take up a ton of space, it isn’t an eye sore, and I can close the closet doors and it disappears. The bad thing is, I can close the closet doors and it will disappear.
Waiting
No one has ever described me as a yard guy. No one has ever come to me to ask for gardening advice. I have never been described as having a green thumb. Now, you might describe Sarah that way, but definitely not me. When Sarah and I bought our first house I in Kansas City it had a yard…but I did not have a lawn mower.
Come To The Light
We have this awesome old Jeep. And by “old” I mean, 1992. And by “awesome” I mean it has some serious issues. I knew when I got it that it had some problems…but I love it and if I’m honest, I love the attention it gets from other people. It’s one of those vehicles that people see it and either think, “that thing is awesome!” or they think, “is that thing street legal?”
Deafening Silence
There has been more sound than most of us prefer lately. I don’t just mean the fireworks last week…or discounted fireworks this week…or music from your neighbors summer party…there is more noise being projected at us from all directions at all times. From frustrations...
Where Do We Look?
There are a lot of ways we tend to gauge things for ourselves.
For some of us it’s a number on a scale. For some of us it’s a number in a bank account. For some of us it is the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the computer we use, or the zip code of our house. Most of us use some sort of metric or a key performance indicator to help us assess where we are and how we are doing. The truth is, if our external indicators look good, we appear to have it all together, family looks good, health looks good, social media looks good, yard looks good, we think, we are good.
In The Heat
I woke up recently with full intention to work out.
To Linger
I was thinking recently about how we far too often move quickly from one place to the next without much care or thought. We have an event or an appointment that we have to take care of and with traffic and other responsibilities, we end up rushing from here to there. We end up using apps on our phones to go places we know how to get to, because if there is a traffic jam or backup, we can take a different route to get there as quickly as possible.
Selah
It’s not uncommon that we like to play misery poker. We try to one up one another with our health problems, our family drama, how ridiculous a co-worker is, how unreasonable an in-law is, how terrible our day has been and on and on. This one upping to see who is more miserable is really a terrible way to pass time…and unfortunately this is something most of us will do left to our own devices. I have had conversations with my kids where their day is a bit off…and they immediately start looking for how difficult school is and how mean the bus driver was and how they don’t have a certain piece of technology…and on and on. Many of us start at our worst…and look for things to get worse. We start down and go downward.
To Restore
I recently borrowed a pressure washer from someone. When I started to rinse off an area on the side of my house that had mud and grime, stuff started to come off that I didn’t even know was there. Stains that had tinted the grout around the bricks. Dirt that had found its way into the crevices of the exterior of the house. And more stuff started to fall away from the cleansing water that I didn’t even realize was making my house dirty. I felt so accomplished after I finished one side of my house…that I started to work on the fence.
Fake Fall
We are living in fake fall. It’s not real fall. Fall doesn’t start until…wait for it…Thursday, September 22nd. That is a month from now…and yet we are in the midst of fake fall. Pumpkin and cinnamon things are sneaking into our grocery carts and coffee orders. Our pineapple and coconut have been prematurely traded for pumpkin and chai. People are growing out their facial hair…maybe that is just me…and assessing their flannel and boots. We claim an 85 degree morning that is overcast as that cool fall air. We see (and buy) apple orchard soap, fall farmers market candles, and crisp autumn morning wax melts. Just for clarity, all of those things smell lovely as soap, candles, and wax melts…but they smell nothing like the actual thing. Apple orchards smell like…well…I’m not sure what they smell like…but probably not cinnamon apple sauce soap.
Cloffice
I have an office at home that Sarah built into a closet. It’s my “cloffice”. It’s a thing on Pinterest. Google it. Now the nice thing about having a “cloffice” is that it doesn’t take up a ton of space, it isn’t an eye sore, and I can close the closet doors and it disappears. The bad thing is, I can close the closet doors and it will disappear.
Waiting
No one has ever described me as a yard guy. No one has ever come to me to ask for gardening advice. I have never been described as having a green thumb. Now, you might describe Sarah that way, but definitely not me. When Sarah and I bought our first house I in Kansas City it had a yard…but I did not have a lawn mower.
Come To The Light
We have this awesome old Jeep. And by “old” I mean, 1992. And by “awesome” I mean it has some serious issues. I knew when I got it that it had some problems…but I love it and if I’m honest, I love the attention it gets from other people. It’s one of those vehicles that people see it and either think, “that thing is awesome!” or they think, “is that thing street legal?”
Deafening Silence
There has been more sound than most of us prefer lately. I don’t just mean the fireworks last week…or discounted fireworks this week…or music from your neighbors summer party…there is more noise being projected at us from all directions at all times. From frustrations...
Where Do We Look?
There are a lot of ways we tend to gauge things for ourselves.
For some of us it’s a number on a scale. For some of us it’s a number in a bank account. For some of us it is the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the computer we use, or the zip code of our house. Most of us use some sort of metric or a key performance indicator to help us assess where we are and how we are doing. The truth is, if our external indicators look good, we appear to have it all together, family looks good, health looks good, social media looks good, yard looks good, we think, we are good.
In The Heat
I woke up recently with full intention to work out.
To Linger
I was thinking recently about how we far too often move quickly from one place to the next without much care or thought. We have an event or an appointment that we have to take care of and with traffic and other responsibilities, we end up rushing from here to there. We end up using apps on our phones to go places we know how to get to, because if there is a traffic jam or backup, we can take a different route to get there as quickly as possible.