Friday Favorite!

 Happy Good Friday! Today is not just any Friday for thousands of people around the world. It is Good Friday. A day that Christians come together in a solemn service to acknowledge the sacrifice of God's son Jesus for ALL of humanity.

Take that in. Believe it if you can.

On this Good Friday I will attend worship later this evening & be as productive as I can be in the mean time.

Yesterday our mail delivery person rang the doorbell in the midst of a little afternoon cleaning. My hands were clad in beautiful yellow rubber gloves that are slightly too big for me & soaked in dirty dish water. Thankfully Z was home & so he was able to answer the door in the midst of his drying of the dishes. When the mail deliverer rings the doorbell it usually means something fun has come that's too big to be put in our mail box.

This week that surprise was an Easter "basket" from Ma & Pa N. Since we were in the middle of dishes we decided to set the box aside & finish that part of our chores before opening the mail. When we were done we went to open the box & other envelopes only to find our little fur baby perched on top of the box in the chair. Sadly for Michi there was nothing specific for her in the box, but she did snatch a crumb or two from Z's cookies he was enjoying. 

May this Good Friday be a day of reflection & a day of waiting for the known Surprise that comes Sunday morning.

Sunday Snippits: good, bad, & ugly

Sunday Snippits with

GOOD: Fall is here! Not only by the cooler weather, but the smells & the changing of the leaves & the fact that the calendar says so, FALL has arrived. I love Fall! This last week is a bit of a blurr. Yet again it was spent doing more networking & community building. Two things that I really enjoy, so it doesn't seem like work. Early in the week I got to connect with some of my family & congratulate my 16 y/o cousin for his 62 YARD TOUCHDOWN! He's a sophomore & gets to occasionally play on the Varsity team & a few games ago now, he had one of the best moves of his football career. This makes me excited to be able to make it to one or two of his future games before he graduates & goes off to college. We also go to take the short road-trip to Camp Michi-Lu-Ca to see the beautiful land & get to know our new colleagues & friends in ministry A,D, & I. Yesterday, in our attempts to get to know more about town, we decided to go for dinner at This Old House. While they claim to have the best pizza in town, we decided we liked Alcocks better. The motif was fun & we'll prolly go back for something else on the menu, but not the pizza.

BAD: A few weeks ago I shared about this cycling accident & added to a number of prayer lists. I only sort of knew the couple, but know several people who were quite close with them. Both of them were working in specialized ministry & had a great way of bringing joy to those around them. While Rob passed away on the scene of the accident, Hilary had been on life support until a couple of days ago when the family made the hard to decision to let her body do what it would & join the glory of God in heaven. My heart aches for their family & friends, the church that she worked at & the cycling community who had come to know them & their energy for safe cycling.

UGLY: Last week, I said to turn on the news. Well this week that proves true again! This morning before church, while I was trying to think of what to share with yall, the news was about the mall massacre in Kenya, the potential of the US government shutting down, people fighting about healthcare, & more death in Palestine.

so I turned to the WORD: & read Luke 16:1-13 (the Gospel lesson today for those who follow the Revised Common Lectionary) which then also threw me for a little confusion. Check out, focus on the last two or three sentences & tell me what God's saying to you.

COMING UP: Next weekend we get to go on a vacay back to the beautiful state of MN to not only hang out with family (from IN, MD, MN, & AZ!) but for Z's ordination as a pastor in the ELCA. I already have plans to go to Target & Caribou Coffee. I'll catch up with Sunday Snippits after all the festivities & travels are over.

Thirsting for a Thursday Special

You've most likely missed Sunday Snippits & Tuesday Tea Time, those are everybody's favorite pieces of me sharing Life, Spirit, & Sparkle. So here's a Thursday Special to quench your Thursday Thirst!

The topic of the day: ambiguity

As I sit quietly listening to see if WOK will wake up from his nap, the 6 fingered cat Ernie (yes, after Hemingway) is howling from the basement. 

This is not ambiguity, this just is.

Now that graduation has come & gone, Z & I sit in a time of unknowns. Maybe today's topic should be hopeful unknowns. Ambiguity still fits though because we know that we have been assigned to serve in the North/West Lower Michigan synod & we know that the synod staff is working to give us potential placements. We know so much & at the same time, so little. 

Last week we celebrated 4(+) years  with friends & shared how we have been impacted by each other & our time at seminary. The next day family started arriving & Saturday afternoon we had all of our immediate family in our apartment except for my brother (who was camping in PA). At baccalaureate we were reminded to let the Gospel surprise us & at commencement we were given a pep talk to not be boring. Living in ambiguous unknowns is NOT boring.

It is the working of the Spirit that keeps us hopeful in the unknowns & the ambiguous "answers" to our questions of "What's next?!"

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.