Hung up thoughts


I ended up spending the past half hour changing my picture fifty times on Facebook and reading my pastor's very amusing blog.

This is the problem with me and writing. Thoughts, some longer than others, some more sensical than others, come into my head usually while I'm driving. By the time I get home, think I'm going to sit down and write, I end up reading and playing with pictures. I'm just like my 7 year old.

Poor kid just can't stay on task very well. Have you seen the movie "Up"? Think "Squirrel!"

Tonight he was talking to his dad on the phone, told him to hold on, came into the living room and began showing me how to do a "star" like they do in his gym class. All this while naked and the water running for his shower. Then he had a light-bulb flash over his head, went streaking into the bathroom, picked up the phone and called, "Dad? Dad? Are you there?" He wondered why his dad hung up fifteen minutes after being set on the bathroom floor.

I may not look as outwardly hyper and distracted (or maybe I do), but if you could see in my brain, I'm running from one thought to another, leaving half-finished thoughts laying on the bathroom floor. Then when I finally realize I'm way off track from what I started out thinking, I go back to those thoughts and they've hung up already.

Oh well. Here's a proverb which triggered some writing-thinking today:

Its hard to know what to do with the wise advice: Throw out the mocker, and fighting goes, too. Quarrels and insults will disappear (Proverbs 22:10), when the "mocker" is a person you can't just throw out.

That's as far as that thought goes though cause there's no answer on the other end.


Quieted,
Sheila

Let the first grader talking begin!


So there I was, sitting on the ground on the sidelines of my 7 year old's basketball practice, reading from my Kindle, glancing up to catch attempts at making baskets, when the most dreaded child on the team (who's always fighting his own teammates for the ball) boldly trotted right up to me, leaned his squinty-eyed face forward and demanded, "Is that and ipad?!"

"Nope," I answered, "It's a Kindle Fire."

More inquisitiveness. "Well, do you read books on it?!"

"Yep."

"What book are you reading now?"

"The Bible."

"What's that?!"

"Have you ever heard of the Bible?"

"No. I went to church once. Heard the Bible. But there's nothing in it."

"Oh, but there is something in it!"

"What's it about then?"

"It's about how God loves you."

"God!? Who's God??"

"He's the One who made you."

"Me?! What?!"

The sound of a loud whistle interrupted an eternally significant conversation with a rambunctious first grader. He ran off to his coach. I watched. Looked up in the black sky where bright, twinkling lights shone in a dark world.

Oh that we'd talk about God who loves us more. Simply. Not politically-correctly. Childlike. Not theologian-like.

More talking about God's story and us in it and His love for us. Less grumbling and complaining and bickering and pointing fingers.

Oh that we would talk about God's goodness and our brokenness and His marvelous plan to save us and make us new.

Let the talking begin!

"Well, what if so-and-so's religion isn't the same as yours?" my friend the critic asks.

So-and-so and I would have a much better relationship if we talked about God and our brokenness in a candid, first-grader way rather than trying to be all suit-and-tie, amendment-quoting, society-sterilizing and elephant-ignoring about the God whom without we would not exist. And even if so-and-so thinks we would exist without God, let's talk. Let's hear some elementary style questions like, "God who?" And some child-of-God like answers such as, "The God who made and loves you."

Let the first grader God-talking begin!

Do everything without grumbling and arguing so that you may be blameless and pure, innocent children of God surrounded by people who are crooked and corrupt. Among these people you shine like stars in the world because you hold on to the word of life. -Phil.2:14-16




Quieted,
Sheila

Featured Post

I've MOVED!