A Very Busy But Satisfying Day!

Yes, I am an early person. On Sundays I am usually up by 5 a.m. I like to spend some time reflecting on the lesson I will be teaching at 9 a.m., listen to the Gaither music hour, and generally prepare for the day. Myself and another fellow are usually at the Church property by 7 a.m., to get everything ready for the day. We don’t have to be there that early but we enjoy our time together and in making sure all is working and ready.

I have a wonderful class called Truthseekers and we are currently working our way through a verse by verse exposition through the Gospel of John. Yesterday we finished chapter 12 as we completed our 36th lesson thus far. As you can see we are not in any hurry. I like to take and deal with the verses as they come to me, bit by bit, thought by thought, and hopefully application by application. We had a great class and I had to then hurry to choir to get ready for worship music.

There’s always a dynamic tension between trying to finish the lesson and also get to the choir room at ten minutes to ten. Some days it is just too difficult and there are times when someone has a question or needs to talk and I just have to skip choir. But yesterday we had a particularly wonderful thirty minute program of music and celebration that focused on the reason we show up each week, to bring honor and glory to The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. We then had another message from our pastor in a series devoted to stewardship. His emphasis is looking not just at monetary issues but the whole enchilada, from our time, talent, testimony, all the way to our treasures. It was a convicting message but one we all needed to hear.

I always help greet after the service because I love to represent our Lord to the folks who came. I also love the little ones. We have so many children and they are all precious and I do love being able to touch them as they exit each Sunday. What a great blessing to be able to enjoy all these things and to know that God is pleased whenever we do what we do because of our love for Him.

After Church I hurried home and switched gears quickly. There’s always that ‘nap’ thing that is calling but I’m not a long nap kind of person. Since it was my wife’s day to cover the store at the mall I fixed me a sandwich and then contemplated how I was going to keep up with the Texans, the Tiger, and the NASCAR race all at the same time. Talk about flipping forth and back, and back and forth. I could tell I was getting too stirred up on all fronts so I decided maybe a nap would be good. I went and laid down but the damage was pretty much already done. Too many neurons on overdrive because I was back up within 20 minutes and returned to my triple flip program.

The boys tell people when they were young they were the only remote control devices we had. If I wanted to see a different channel I would holler at one of them to get up and change it. If that didn’t suit me I would have them change it to another. They dreaded me walking through the door each day because we only had one TV and they knew it was going to be put on the McNeil/Lehrer Report on PBS. Maybe that’s one reason they didn’t mind me working late many nights.

Well, what an afternoon! Tiger waltzed his way into the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup. The Texans put a genuine whupping on the Carolina Panthers. And, my racer, Jeff Gordon, finished second, and is now tied for the lead for the Nextel Championship with nine races to go. What an afternoon! But I had to hurry because I had to be back at the Church for choir practice at 4:30. When I went to brush my teeth I looked at myself in the mirror and my face was glowing like a volcano. I wish I wouldn’t get so stirred up but that’s the world of the spectator who cares, I guess.

We had a great choir practice and fished at 5:45 p.m. I then hurried to make the coffee for the evening Bible study. Our pastor is doing a series from the Book of Hebrews. We had a good group there and afterwards I got home at 8:30 p.m. and immediately put on the Speed Channel to watch all the commentary from the day’s racing activities. My wife came in from work and asked how everything had gone today. I know she was tired from working but I couldn’t help but share what a very busy but satisfying day I had experienced!