clapping babies

I have gained a new appreciation for clapping babies. Ordinarily I hate it when we are sitting in Olive Garden or Chillis and some little rug rat starts screaming...for no apparent reason. This has to be at the top of my list of things I don't like in a restaurant.

But when my grandson, Xander, screams an ear splitting, silverware rattling scream and then follows it up with clapping and a big smile, I have to say, there is no baby that could ever top him in charm and pure cuteness.

picking up the pieces in Gulf Port

Some of us in our faith community felt convicted when several things came together at the same time...
...we were reading The Purpose Driven Life
...hurricanes hit the Gulf and millions of people were adversely affected
...we had vacation days or other time available to be gone for a few days
...someone in our church had some contacts with some people in the Gulf area

So we spent a week helping and serving others, in addition to being humbled at the immensity of the need there.

It took a lot of effort to just do something that seemed simple, such as, to just pick up and clear out a path so someone could get their vehicle in to what used to be their driveway. I was struck at what a tangled mess everything was.

Lying across the driveway were several sections of really nice black antique wrought iron fence. You would think the fencing would be easy enough to pick up and throw off to the side. In reality it couldn't be easily moved because there were so many things tangled up in it and interconnected with other pieces of the house, fallen garden walls, and paraphenelia.
Tangled in a four foot long section of fencing was/were:
a man's tie
a twisted and tangled shirt
four or so necklaces of beads, the type that they throw from the floats at Mardi Gras
thick nylon fishing line everywhere
a golf club
thick electrical wiring threaded through short sections of 2x4's
pieces of a picket fence
etc. etc.

Lying on top of that tangled mess was the sheet metal remants of a fireplace insert. Take away the sheet metal and broken tiles and underneath are all kinds of little pieces of memorabilia from the lives of the family that used to live there.
A track and field ribbon from a youth's athletic endeavor. I looked for the medal that would have been attached to it but couldn't find it.
a stack of snapshots that had been ruined by the salt water
a fully intact goblet
and so on and so on

Why do we cling so fiercely to things...things that can be gone in a moment or quickly be turned into trash? It can all be quickly turned into trash.

40 more years of purpose

Our faith community just finished going through the 40 Days of Purpose Campaign. We all read the Purpose Driven Life book by Rick Warren together even though many of us had read it before. I don't mind reading a book more than once. I've read the Hobbit and Rings series twice, Chronicles of Narnia several times, Tarzan of the Apes about ten times.

A few observations. When you are panning for gold you discard some uninteresting sand and gravel but you do get a few gold nuggets and that makes it worthwhile. It would be easy to criticize the sand and gravel, the trite sayings, the shoddy Bible study, the circular reasoning, the logical fallicies. There are all of those things in most popular Christian books. Someone could find that in some of what I say and write too. Looking past these human frailties you can't deny that God is using The Purpose Driven Life to accomplish a lot of things that He wants done.

Rick Warren reminds us of some things that we already know but aren't doing anything about. We can all use a few reminders.

We're done with the 40 Days of Purpose, now I just need to live another 40 years of purpose.