It Seems I DID Party More In 1992.

The day before and the day after, twenty-four years ago ...


7 December


The Last Supper as told in Luke 7:7-38 is a reminder to remember what Jesus has done for us and remember He Himself.


When the disciples (as we often do) disputed about who was the greatest, Jesus said that all of them were servants. Each of them have their own gifts or talents in Jesus' name, then you are great, no greater than anyone else. Mother Teresa will not get better treatment in the kingdom of heaven than you.


When the disciples were sent out "without purse, bag or sandals," they still lacked nothing. Jesus telling them to get a purse, a bag, and a sword is telling them to prepare for the journey that they will make. "And he was numbered among the transgressors" does not refer to an elaborate staging, but rather to the role that He -- and the disciples -- will be playing in the future. Transgressors against injustice, social immorality, all of those things which mark a world-oriented person who only lives for now -- such a person will always be seen as the enemy.


9 December


Amy left last night. Strangely enough, I don't feel any genuine remorse over it. Perhaps we were growing apart since the week before Thanksgiving, and I just didn't want to admit it. I hate losing relationships.


When Shipra spoke to me earlier yesterday, she confronted me with a stunning reality -- I had become spiritually stagnant. In 1 Thessalonians, it is written that "it is God's will that you should be sanctified" -- I ask, how am I?

And here we are.


I have a nephew by marriage, the son of Martha's cousin Dionne in Bismarck -- Jordan -- who turns twenty-four today. He's as old as the journal entry that I missed here, from my second bound volume. Wow, quoting this brings back some memories I don't want to relive. I think. But now that I'm reading them after I typed them out -- by the way, this is from my junior year at Stetson, eight years pre Martha so she has no cause to be jealous of a former girlfriend like Amy -- it seems like I'm reflecting two extremes, being rather more judging than I'd like to think I am now


and being focused more than I sometimes am now.


Sometimes I wonder if there was a point to something my brother-in-law Allan said when our family lived at his house for a few months during the 2011 flood, something to the effect of what's the point in writing all this down? What's so good about knowing about the past? Or to personalize Ebenezer Scrooge's experience with the Ghost of Christmas Past to me, MY past? I'd like to think that I'm willing to learn from my mistakes so I don't repeat them, and likewise model for my children and household not to make them, but the closer I get to the end of my fifth decade, the more it feels


an exercise of my ego.


I mean, will Sarah and Jeffrey really take the time once I've gone back to heaven to even read some of this stuff? Or share it with their kids so they can see [their] grandfather as more than an eccentric? How cathartic can it be when I'm documenting Scripture readings and prayer requests and not just writing longhand "hey, this is what's going on" with very few connecting threads? Or am I just saying this now because business is dead even though the winds are no longer whipping snow every which way and loose and I'm not in Winston Churchill mode


where I'm so busy I have no time to worry.


I'm not worried, really. Got to more of a Wednesday night Advent service after work last night than I have been to in years; I got there right as offering was taken as met the kids smiling more than they have to me in days (particularly Sarah, who got her homework done without anyone's goading -- but I do need to be careful how I say some of this; Jeffrey read my Monday blog post last night and pointed out something was Sarah's fault that I had said was his based on the information I had at the time). The kids stayed up until Martha got home, or close to it.


Last Wednesday was the snow day when nobody went anywhere.


So practice ran extra for the Christmas cantata, and this morning I got the kids to school and we got to work okay since the City of Minot finally cleared the high piles of snow off the road in front of our house! And now as I stand finishing this post and percolating the wording and post of tomorrow's Ensign (there really IS a thought process going into them, in case you were wondering) I find that as I'm diving into the weekend I want it, besides being a good one for my birthday on Sunday, to be something worth celebrating. Something worth celebrating for me and mine every day.


David