myspace

I have been trying to update my myspace so you can find me there if I am not here.

L

church services

Amber and I have been to many churches since we came to upstate New York.  They all have one thing in common (unfortunately).  The services seem to lack any aspect of celebration.  It is more of a going away party with the "guest" of honor already having left. 

I wrote something right after the last service and I will add it here.  Let me know what you think.

Currently Reading The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference By Malcolm Gladwell see related

Questions and Prayers

Today I was a sub at the school.  I only taught for the first period and the last.  I was pretty bored in between those classes (I forgot that proverbial book I am always reading).  Anyway, I prayed quite distinctly for God to use me somehow during the day.  I asked for something to do while I was waiting for my next class to start and they sent me to help with the profoundly impared.  I'm not sure if I felt uncomfortable.  I think I just felt like I was in a situation where I did not know anything to do.  I really didn't know how to help.  So I stood (and sat) around for about and hour or so.

Then at the end of the day at about 2:30 during my second class a couple of students had a verbal altercation.  I went over and broke it up and sent them in separate directions.  I thought it would be OK.  About 15 min later one student  was walking out on the floor towards the other and they were in an all out fist fight before I could get to them.  In trying to come between them I managed to get hit on the arm (that will make a nice bruise) but I could not separate them.  I was so afraid they would injure each other.  I was not even mad at them just concerned for them both.  I still feel that way.  Did I fail? 

My life is still up in the air.  No one really lives like this I find.  They all make decisions that benefit themselves and move on.  I find that I cannot make a decision because I am not hearing anything from God but wait.  Wait, my friend, is a four letter word.  None more foul than wait.  I am a person of action.  I would rather make a wrong move than none at all.

I throughly expect things to be unfair.  After all, this is not heaven.  It is a fallen world with everything tainted and affected by sin.   Evil does not surprise me.  Love and kindness surprise me.  Those are the things that bring tears to my eyes.  I fully expect evil.  But, to tell the truth, I would like to be surprised for a change.

I would like to suggest that those of you with any bent toward understanding people and society read this book I just finished "Tipping Point".  I also have read "Who moved My Cheese" and I am reading two others.  I'll let you know how they turn out.

I don't love you all nearly as well as you deserve but I do stop and pray when people ask me to (like Jena).  So, I guess, He will fill up the love gap I leave.

May He bless you as you pursue Him.

Rev Lynn K

Currently Listening Eagles - Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 By Eagles see related

Hey!  I am a substitute teacher in the schools in Roane county now.  I love it.  I really do.  I already have more illustrations for sermons than I have had in years.  Go figure.  This little girl came up to me in school one day.  She was holding her finger like it really hurt.  "My finger hurts" she said.  I looked at it and couldn't see a thing but I wanted to sympathize so I looked at it and then into her eyes.  her eyes said she was in a lot of pain.  Her clothes weren't clean.  She had smudges of dirt on her face.  her eyes said it all.  Deep pools of need.  I don't really know what's happening.  I hear from other teachers that some of these kids face the fact that they go home and their parent is dead drunk on the couch or not home.  Some have an environment where meth is being cooked in the kitchen instead of supper.  They come to school hungry.  I am sure in a community there is some abuse of some kind and neglect of another.  Their eyes say they hurt.  But they can't tell me that.  Instead they hold up this invisible hurt finger and say, "Can I have a bandaid?"

We are like that.  We see the depth of sin in our lives and can't admit to it.  It would cause too much pain.  Maybe we would say, "I'm cheating on my spouse."  "I'm sleeping with my boyfriend/girlfriend."  "I'm stealing from the company I work for to support my gambling habit."  Or...

I'm cooking meth in the kitchen...

I'm dead drunk on the couch when the kids come home...

I'm abusing my child...

So we come and sit in church and ask for a spiritual bandaid.  Make me feel OK so I can keep up the front.  Until we acknowledge the depth of our depravity and lostness we can never feel the cleansing grace of forgiveness and heal.  We simply stay walking wounded.

Yeah.  I've learned a lot in school.

Goodnight all.

Love to you and God Bless you!

Currently Reading A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in The Lost Language of Lament By Michael Card see related

As many of you know...there is a possibility that God will move me from where I am here in Spencer to some other location.  I do not mind the move.  I do not mind that it is one of those things like he did to Abraham, "Go to the place I will show you."  What I mind is that I feel sometimes like I am looking on the faces of a people that I have learned to love so much, that I can at times feel their pain.  Sounds like a Clintonesque saying.  I almost, at times, see the whirring in their little minds, the cogs and wheels of half formed, or perhaps, ill formed thoughts.  That incorrect thinking will eventually lead them to make serious mistakes and cause themselves and those who love them much pain.  This is, to some extent, a consequence of the fall.  It is a consequence of being immature, though some are quite old, and a consequence of sin.  I understand that.  What bothers me is that I am not sure there will be anyone here to tell them that it was for this very thing that Christ streatched out both arms and died on the cross.  To take them into a final loving embrace and tell them, "If you are willing I can cleanse you and make you clean again because I love you so much, I'd be willing to die for you again."  Our sin puts him on the cross and his love waits like an expectant Father to see us coming towards him so he can run and embrace us and then throw us the party of a lifetime. 

Be good to each other.  There is no sin that cannot be forgiven and "love covers a multitude of sins..."  Help one another to stand up again after you fall.  Don't kick someone when they are down.  Someday you will need the hand up.

Ministry is never about money and our service to God isn't about ministry...it's about relationship.

I just read a book called "Sacred Sorrow" where it describes Jeremiah's lament over Jerusalem that he could see in the distance.  For some reason I feel that way now.

Love you all!