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last monday i took a vacation.
i stopped reading my twitter feeds. i stopped reading facebook. i limited my blog reading to sports and humor sites. i’m sure i missed a lot. i heard it was pretty chippy out there in the interspace. i think i’m just about ready to start poking around again. this was not a permanent vacation.
i also took a break from writing. i wonder if anybody noticed? my guess is not a lot of sleep was missed worrying about whether my thoughts were ever going to reappear again…
but here they are anyway:
i’m struggling with concentrating this morning. i’m listening to two (maybe more) squirrels trying to chew an entrance into my attic on the back side of my house. again. my liberal, left-coast, tree-hugging, whale-saving leanings have gone by the wayside when it comes to squirrels. if i had a gun, i would blast their cute little noggins into the texas sky. sunday at north point was definitely a “full house hangover” day. maybe people were afraid to come back. i taught on baptism yesterday. i’m pretty sure baptism is one of the most divisive and opinion-expressing topics in church history. having been raised in a “water regenerationist” heritage, it has been even more volatile for me. i’m not sure if my theological forefathers would have been completely happy with my exegesis of scripture yesterday. but it’s where i’m at now. it’s a command. do it. i’ll teach you why i think it’s important. we’ll continue to try to do it the way they appeared to do it in the book of acts (dunking, right after a person expressed their faith and loyalty to jesus, no infant sprinkling). what if a person believes, but hasn’t been baptized? will they go to hell? gosh. i hope not. i’m pretty sure there are more than a handful of things i’m probably wrong about…and i’ve just gotta believe that god’s grace is deep and wide enough to cover my interpretive shortcomings. i hope that would be true of others, also. what if a person’s motivation for baptism…or understanding of the purpose of baptism…is faulty or incomplete? will it make the baptism ineffective? i seriously doubt it. i’m sure there have been a lot of baptisms that were done to please parents…or to purchase fire insurance…or to impress a fiance…or to secure membership in a church…or to get to eat the sunday morning snacks. i’m sure a lot of those baptisms have missed the point altogether. is god big enough to see through our limitations and adopt us into the family anyway? i sure hope so. it was pretty cool to baptize my friend jackson yesterday. even more cool to be friends with his whole family and to know that his baptism wasn’t just a sappy little church ritual. there is no doubt in my mind that jackson pledged his allegiance to jesus. no doubt he understands his old life was buried and his new life was handed over. lots to do this week. lots of people to contact. lots of studying to do. our country is violently divided right now. my sadness is great. i wish i could say the church will be part of the cure and not continue to be part of the problem, but i can’t yet. time to read the sermon on the mount again. looking forward to advent conspiracy picking up momentum. lots of needs in our community and around the world to respond to. it’s time to focus on others. congrats to cowboy fans. you staved off death for another week. can’t say the same about the chargers. i’m definitely an A&M bandwagon fan. i think it’s the maroon. but i hate the SEC. oh the conflict. bowling season is almost over. i think we’ve avoided last place with our team effort last night. while i’ve been writing, the squirrels made it into the attic. i hear their happy little feet doing a dance above my ceiling. their partying will be short-lived. let the bloodlusting begin. or the fox urine. (more to come.)
time to get busy. have a great week.
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