God, Daniel, and Duran Duran

Yesterday, thirteen years ago …

Is it only me, or do attractive, appealing females seem to be attracted to gangly, uncultivated slobs? But I digress.

This will be a better day because I can make it so. The gifts we've been given are only as good as the use we make of them. This morning, for instance, when I was with the teen Sunday School class, forgive me if it seems more set up with an amusement park mentality sometimes. Yes, John, Chris, Joyce and Sean are coming – but I want to believe we're teaching something more (and learning) than how to be a pool shark when you grow up. We are – we're encouraging them to talk, even if I find them a little harsh-sounding sometimes toward each other. I don't have room to talk, really. I can be insulting and think nothing of it too.

Joyce's levels of devotion (see the title) are hardly surprising at her fourteen years. Her Lord, her boyfriend, and (one of) her favorite bands. Just as adolescence, that tenuous stage between childhood and adulthood, was “phased in” by the Reformation (and the Counter-Reformation), so we're losing that desire and/or need for an in-between. The responsibilities and freedoms that young people have to exercise (in more ways than one!) make them especially inured to criticism, if not outright indifferent to it.

Daniel comes through here today in another way, not only because he served in Babylon and Persia faithfully with the authority he was entrusted with, but also for the strong stance he took, that he had to take, for God. Praying when it had been forbidden to pray to anyone but the king, knowing what would happen to him as a result, yet doing it anyway – that's faith! We are one by one becoming people who don't have the luxury of growing up – we have to grow up now. That is the faith we need, now and always.

Looping back from the BKSJ Emporium today …

I often joke with the family when we're going out to eat that we're headed for the Bread And Water Emporium which the kids KNOW is a joke and they don't hesitate to tell me. And bringing this up to present day made me also think of a Twilight Zone episode from the mid 1980s, “Wong's Lost and Found Emporium”, but it's not quite that. This morning as I brought my kids Sarah and Jeffrey to their grandparents Robert and Sharon's house they met up with Margaret's daughter, my niece Breanna who's living there and her friend Kimi (who's also my niece, apparently) who'd set up a yard sale and lemonade stand in the driveway.

 

Supporting capitalism as I do, I made the first purchase of the day, two little knickknacks for a buck! Then I got to the office where I have been typing this … last night I got the kids home and fixed them turkey burgers for dinner and to MY surprise they didn't want to watch the rather overblown

America's Got Talent as they're wont to do with Martha when she's home, which is getting rarer and rarer lately due to her chosen work schedule. We ate burgers and Pringles, they drank Fanta orange and I Lipton BRISK Raspberry Tea, and we watched VeggieTales' The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's on our laptop! Then they brushed-flossed-flourided, prayed with me, and got into bed earlier than they have been, without complaint.

Well, one complaint. The kids' cousin, Breanna's younger sister and mine and Martha's goddaughter Josceline is in surgery today, and last night I asked the kids to say an extra prayer for her. Sarah is Josceline's best friend and she wanted to go off to pray by herself and so she did, but Jeffrey broke in on her and also stormed into her room later apparently – this is the version I got from Sarah when she came back downstairs – and said her prayer was dumb. I got my point across without beating to my son that prayer is very definitely not dumb, no matter what you're praying for and how you come across saying it. God knows what's on our minds and what we mean better than we ever will. I should know soon how Josceline is.

David