Ten God Moments This Past Week

Pastor Gerald at Bethany yesterday gave a top ten list like this as part of his sermon which emphasized several of Jesus' parables regarding what the kingdom of heaven is like. And as I'm starting a new week myself and figuring out what to write and how to write it, I got to the office this morning and this came across as a good idea. So here we go!

10. We have seventy more dollars in our checking account than we thought we had this morning! I got some money out of my Minot Daily News check (we have a paper route in northwest Minot in my name, but Martha and I take turns and the kids help out when they are conscious) to pay other family members, but my wife had already taken it out from my direct-deposited Marketplace Foods check on our check register. So we still have money today, hallelujah!

9. Which brings us to my being so thankful that Martha is handling the family budget -- the bills we pay, the food we buy, the expenses we accumulate. It's not that I have no idea how to handle it myself, but when I have done it let's say the results have been ... overlapping. And for the last few weeks my wife has done an awesome fantabulous job; I'm pretty sure I would never have found that seventy dollars I refer to in blessing ten! (By the way, these are in no particular order.)

8. Sunday afternoon after church and then lunch at Broadway Bean and Bagel (which Martha had a ten dollar gift card for, so all we ended up paying was change, and the kids chipped in too) she and Sarah went to Wal-Mart to help her parents who had locked themselves out of their car and didn't have the spare set with them. So she got the spare set, and then got a tip on a yard sale in town where clothes were free. We met her there and left with SIX bags of clothes, all free.

7. I actually got to GO to church at my home church Bethany Lutheran this week! I haven't been there in three weeks due to working Sundays at Marketplace, and neither has Martha and the kids -- last week because they didn't get home from chauffeuring duties for family to and from the State Fair until shortly after midnight and crashed until 11:30 in the morning, and the week before because they left with family early Sunday morning for a family reunion held every two years. (Didn't miss much.)

6. John and Alice Durant's Pictorial History of American Presidents. I refer to this book published in 1955 because I hadn't read it in years since I bought it (so it ends with Eisenhower as President of the United States) and it was fun to go through. It's not a simple factual profile and I learned quite a bit -- in a way, more than I'd learn from the latest edition of such a work, combining pictures and keeping text in the neatest balance I've seen in a long time.

5. 'Twas my turn to deliver the papers this morning, and Sarah came with me wearing an outfit she fell asleep in, one of her new ones we got free at the yard sale yesterday (see moment 8) that makes her look more mature than she is old (she's eight). Took us an hour because this was the one day of the week we also delivered the Trading Post to houses that don't subscribe to the Minot Daily to show them a preview of what they're missing. We're getting this down.

4. One month from yesterday, school starts again here in Minot. Sarah and Jeffrey at least say they can't wait to go back, and right now we do have a leg up of having their supplies as some we have barely got used before the end of last year. Usually it's a matter of the family pooling to get school supplies for everybody and school clothes and all the other essentials, but the more insanity we can avoid because so ... many ... hold off until the ads show up telling you to come, come, come!

3. It is a fantastic and beautiful day outside, very little wind, no rain, just the kind of day you imagine heaven's like every day. The State Fair finished up Saturday night, and a day like this is practically a sigh of relief -- not that we don't welcome all the people who come, but it gets a little overwhelming and many's the business rep I talk to who are glad to ease off from the out of towners' pressures. I can take the Fair once a year, no matter how much money I have!

2. A God moment on the other side of the world from me ... yesterday the sixty-first anniversary of the cease-fire ending major hostilities in the Korean War was signed. Yes, Virginia, the Korean War is still on; it's just that nobody is shooting. As long as South Korea looks at reuniting with the North as problematic at best and ruining them for decades at worst (3x the cost of German unification, I've heard Korean reunification would be) and North Korea thinks whatever it thinks, we're stuck with it.

1. I'm alive for a purpose. I suspect it's a greater one than posting these blogs and writing these journals and publishing books -- heck, even greater than raising the greatest kids or loving the most magnificent wife in the world (which I do) -- but as long as I'm working toward that purpose, I expect I won't die until I am either taken up in the Rapture or my purpose, from an eternal standpoint, is done. And as long as I'm alive, it isn't.

We all have God moments -- let's look for ours, David