Under an Endless Sky

• I found my Bible!! I went through every corner of my house several times looking for it. I went to two different churches hunting for it. I went through both vehicles. I even prayed about finding it! Why was I so desperate - don't I have another Bible or two? Yes, I have a number of Bibles but this was my favorite and anyone who has a favorite Bible can relate to how lost one can feel without it. I found it at my church but just sitting on a pew and wouldn't have noticed it on any given Sunday except I was there on Saturday for a worship practice.
• We went to town this morning and so it's so peaceful now that the boys (and Ladger) are sleeping. I worked on putting a worship music package together for this Sunday and called around to pull a team together. And now I still have some time to sit down and chat with y'all.
• This past Sunday was very interesting. We started off our music package with a couple of good strong songs: Great in Power and then a neat version of Nothing But the Blood of Jesus and then a reprise of the chorus of Great in Power again. And it felt dead. Sometimes I wish we could just pray that God would empower us and voila, instant sense of the presence of God. But I know that puts God in a box and it's not the way He works. But by the end of the service something happened because I started off the final song and couldn't sing. The song was "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus". It's a good thing everyone knows it because they really didn't need me leading it as I was singing around a big lump and didn't manage to join in until the third verse. It ended up being a really moving service and it was awesome being a part of it.
• The message was taken from Matthew 15. The main emphasis I got from the message was how arrogant we can be in our thinking. If we think we have something of value to offer to God we don't realize how seriously offensive that is to God. We often say that we love God with all our heart as if that were some great gift to God - our heart. But Jeremiah says our heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. It is not in us to seek God; any seeking we do is actually initiated by God himself because He loves us so much. And any value in our hearts is only when His heart eclipses our heart. God is drawn to our need and it is when we are broken that He draws us to Himself and fills us up. Dare I pray to be broken? How can I not?