Joyful Transformation

I feel a little like I should be in a confessional booth….it’s been three days since my last blogging……Well except for the ROLL TIDE!!

I had a wonderful weekend. I played tennis everyday, watched the TIDE roll on Saturday afternoon, and went with David to see Serenity Saturday night. I actually liked this movie a lot. It was filled with action, had a good story line and they kept it clean…no bad language no nudity. It may have been a little on the violent side, but it was in control.

Yesterday was perfect weather for tennis and it was a lot of fun, but it was hard to contain my excitement about what was to come next. We had our first meeting in our new building last night. No it’s not finished, it is not even real close. But it was structurally sound enough to have people walking through. We wrote our favorite scriptures on the floor. These will be covered by the carpet in the coming months, but we will always know that they are there. I think we have achieved a nice very functional building without making it ostentatious. It was a great evening. Perhaps I can get off the see-saw of “should we be spending this much money on ourselves” and focus on the good we can do with a more centralized, functional home base. I think it is a good thing that God has given me the spirit of analyzing every situation. While I usually go along with the plans of the many, I have never been one to do it without analyzing it from every angle. Sometimes this only builds frustration, but when I get behind something, I have thought it through and will not usually be blind-sided by pitfalls that others may fall into. I am not sure if it is more of a curse or a blessing to always play the “devil’s advocate”.

This morning I was thinking that I should have written more scriptures about grace. I did use some verses from my favorite chapter Romans 8 about nothing being able to separate us from the love of Christ.

This morning they were replaying the Talladega Race on the NASCAR channel (144 on XM). I decided I needed to talk to God more than I needed to hear that replay. However, I think racing was still somewhere in the back corner of my mind…..As I approached the red light that turns onto the main road through Cullman I pulled up by a motorcycle. Well I didn’t pay a lot of attention to him, I just noticed that he had not tripped the light and we had to wait another full cycle for it to change. Well when the light changed we took off. Now they have just re-surfaced highway 31 and it is real smooth……I was in the right lane, he was in the left and I couldn’t shake him. I don’t like to drive real fast through town, but I don’t like to ride side by side when we are the only two vehicles on the road heading north. Well when we got to where there are more red lights they were all staying green, I admit I was driving faster than I was comfortable driving (around 50mph) through town, but I just had one more light to make…..then that silly motorcycle pulled a trick on me. He had those flashing blue lights!! What? How could I not have noticed this? Well, I had no defense, he had been with me all the way through town, I just hope my insurance card is where it is supposed to be….I pulled over, rolled down my window and he pulled over next to me, still on his motorcycle. “You need to watch your speed through here” he said. “The speed limit is 30 and you were going close to 50”. “Yes sir” I said. I can’t believe he let me off. Today my job is to “Pay it forward”, this time the “it” being grace.