Thursday, March 19, 2009

You'r a Tease

You heard me - that's right. You are a real teas and that is not right.

I admit that I am tired of winter. We had snow - plenty of it. There were winters that barely seemed like winter but this wasn't one of them. We had snow -about 3 feet of the beautiful, but oh so cold white stuff. Winter came and now it is time to make way for spring.

I said that it was that time, but you are being a tease. It was beautiful for a few days. It even got close to 70. then every time you have to let winter back in the door. That is just not nice.

So spring, please, come and stay

Monday, March 9, 2009

Spritual Mutt

One of the churches we are currently attending is on Saturday night. It was the first one we visited when we began to look. We liked it, but there was nothing there for the older kids so we sadly crossed it off the list. This fall they began a Saturday night service and we began attending then. We still make sure to get the kids to church on Sunday, but Tom and I really like the intimate evening service.

This week's sermon was on Freedom from Religion. One of the points made was that many people just follow the rites and practices prescribed by whatever church they are going to and think that makes everything "right" with God. They also get the idea that there is one way - whatever they are doing - and that everyone else is wrong.

It was then I realized how much of a spiritual mutt I am. I was raised in the Christian church - Disciples of Christ. I went to a United Church of Christ youth group growing up. I married a Catholic with both his priest and my minister presiding over the ceremony. When that church closed I found an American Baptist church (the one place that has felt like home more than any other). I attended MOPS at a Lutheran church when my kids were young. My kids began attending Awana at a Southern Baptist church. They grew out of that Awana program so we began going to a different Awana at a church that I don't even know what the "official" denomination is. When scouts came along they met at churches, Timothy at a United Methodist and the girls at two different Catholic parishes. Then the search for a new church was upon us. I won't even list all the denominations that we looked at briefly. Now however we are attending and Assembly of God on Saturday night and an Evangelical church on Sundays.

With all that church background I have managed to sort out what is really important to me and my walk with the Lord. It isn't a certain kind of music, or a particular translation of the Bible or even the way a church is set up. Being a spiritual mutt, I have discovered what is the most important and that is HIM - everything else is just earthy trappings of religion.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Two Winners

Emily's Car: She won second place in the race for her age group.




Eva's Car: The artistic award was for all ages. She took fourth place in that. Although it is not clear in the photo the "crayons" tell the salvation story and the 3:16 stands for John 3:16 which says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life." rather than the number of crayons

Today was the Awana Grand Prix. I am not usually fond of this because of the way it was run at the Awana that we had gone to in the past. There was no classification by age etc. The youngest kids always won, because other than possibly picking the color they had nothing to do with it and just by looking you could tell that dad did all the work.


Add that to the general insanity of my house that is doubled at race time and I really don't care for the Grand Prix. It is tough enough to get the cars cut (which we didn't really do this year - just check out the pictures) and painted. Then Tom, being in the car industry, has to obsess and make one too - but his is always "special" and I just dread it.

This year things were different. The church where the girls are now attending Awana really seems to know what they were doing. They broke the kids down according to age and the races were much more fair because of it. We went for very simple designs because we missed the week where the kids could use the tools to cut them so we worked with just blocks.