In Camera

Twenty years ago ...


1 Corinthians 3:11-23                                                  October 6
Jack and Hazel Chapin, Mid-West Reps                      9610.06


Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. 13


Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in You? 16


Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. 18


Here's the story: I've spent the better part of my day at church, and Welaka, at least, is going through a more drastic change -- the pastor there got voted out by the narrowest of margins. Ron Leonard's been there for only eight months, and already, like Calvin and Hobbes, he seems to be regarded as old hat. These days the presence of the Holy Spirit often is. I pray, as all the men at Welaka Baptist do, for God's will to be known in this matter and for the courage (we all too often need) to do it.


[Context: With this journal entry I pasted in the previous day's The Family Circus comic, where one of the boys is telling his brother, "Calvin and Hobbes? Oh, that was a newspaper comic from the olden days." That was the moment, approaching my twenty-fifth birthday in two months and five days, I felt old. And Calvin and Hobbes had only ended last New Year's Eve. OUCH! - D.]


I saw Mary (Aaron Dunn's sister) when I left church and found that Carl and Geneva Lamb had died -- he in June, she in September. Ray Fuller suffered a stroke like Dad's and is in the nursing home; his wife is bedridden. Aaron and Norma will be back there next Sunday giving God's message. Lord, see that with your eyes on me.


[Prayer requests on my margins of this four-page journal entry include: Presidential debates in Hartford, CT tonight; Dad will have PT and come home Tuesday (looks like that day was a Sunday - D.); talks at Erez Checkpoint tomorrow between Israelis and Palestinians to bear fruit, and I glued in two news items about Taliban-Afghan government fighting. - D.]


See, I can tell a good story ...


So last night after closing the office I met Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey at church where the kids had already had their Carol Choir practice and Martha was about to start Sanctuary Choir ... geez, I talk about the kids singing so much and choir so much that there are some days I wonder why Bethany Lutheran Church doesn't just vote to change its name to Bethany Lutheran Choir. In truth, to hear some people speak you would think that music and singing is the only thing good about it.


Okay, enough rant.


I brought Sarah and Jeffrey home with me and we shared Little Caesar's pizza -- the kids cheese, me pepperoni -- when we got home and settled in for some TV time before they had to go to bed. This morning the kids got awake and I feel they need to find something else to do in the morning before school BESIDES watching television. Oh, they'll still eat breakfast and get themselves ready, but I. am. so. fed. up. with. their. stomping. all. over. the. house.


They think they're wearing me down with their "negotiating skills", but they're sadly mistaken.


Here we are on day two of our local Christian radio station KHRT's Sharathon which comes every six months to raise about twenty percent of its budget by appealing to listeners (the other eighty percent comes from advertising), and I did remember to make my donation! Hallelujah. And on the subject of remembering ...
Two days ago I woke up from a dream of mine where all the cameras on a wide boulevard were covered by masking tape, in Russia. I don't know how I knew that, I just knew. The dream started with one person I couldn't see unscrewing a camera from the base of a lamppost and just leaving it there. There was a slogan I heard or saw or sensed throughout that dream, "Why all the cameras?" Or its Russian equivalent, I guess, but I understood it.


Why all the cameras?


David