O-Dark-Thirty

I don't think guys understand God the way that women do. Perhaps we do when we get older. My wife is an amazing woman with an odd relationship with God. Many times I watch her pray for a close parking place when she goes to the store. No, really. She prays for that right in the car when she pulls in the parking lot. "Lord," she says, "please lead me to a good spot." I wouldn't dare do that. God has bigger things to worry about than where I park. But God loves us equally. He gives Darling close parking places because she asks; He gives me the ones further away because I need the exercise (and probably because I don't ask). Then she thanks God for the parking space. I don't usually thank Him for mine. (Maybe that's why she gets better spots.) And Darling's faith doesn't waver. Her immediate response to the announcement of my layoff in April of 2009 was "God will take care of us." And I believe it, of course, but sometimes ...

Matthew 4:1-11 The Temptation of Jesus in the Desert Italicized sentences are my thoughts, not from the sermon. All Bible verses are in NIV. 1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'” 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” 7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and...

Pastor Ron Hindt took us through the first part of Matthew 4 and talked about temptation. I have to admit that this sermon hit me hard, not necessarily for my current failures as much as my past failures. I owe a lot of people apologies for many of my poor choices in life. He started his sermon with some immutable laws of the universe. I didn't write them down, but the internet is a pretty handy resource. (What did we do before the internet? I think we talked more…) So I think this is the list or close to it. Law of Mechanical Repair - When your hands are coated with grease, your nose will itch. Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner. Law of Probability -The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal and someone always answers. Law of the Alibi - If you tell the boss you were late for w...

  My youngest daughter E is twenty-one today. I really wanted her to be born on the nineteenth, maybe because it is a prime number, but mostly because I thought having a birth date of 9/19/1991 would be so very, very cool. I like the repetition of the digits and the symmetrical non-symmetry. As it turns out, E didn't need a special birth date to be an extremely cool person. When E started walking her first serious target was our bookshelf. A few weeks after she gained bipedal mobility she grasped the cover of our copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare and pulled it from the shelf. We actually tacked cross-stitch fabric over the lower shelves to protect our books (and her tiny toes). I'm not sure we needed to do so, except that some (like Shakespeare) were pretty heavy. When she turned four years old I sat down to read a book to her, one of her favorites. As we sat and I said I'd read it, she said that was okay, she would read it to me. Astounded I watche...

September 17 is Constitution Day, the date commemorating the day in 1787 when the United States Constitution was signed. Here are some facts about the US Constitution . The U.S. Constitution has 4,400 words. It is the oldest and shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world. Thomas Jefferson did not sign the Constitution. He was in France during the Convention, where he served as the U.S. minister. John Adams was serving as the U.S. minister to Great Britain during the Constitutional Convention and did not attend either. The Great Compromise saved the Constitutional Convention, and, probably, the Union. Authored by Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman, it called for proportional representation in the House, and one representative per state in the Senate (this was later changed to two.) The compromise passed 5-to-4, with one state, Massachusetts, “divided.” The first time the formal term “The United States of America” was used was in the Declaration of I...

Ideas  are easy. I get ideas for articles all the time. I just don't follow through on them. I get a lot of my ideas while I'm driving. I read decades ago that driving occupies your analytical mind and lets your creative mind work unhindered. I believe that's probably true.  I think about how I am not doing my Prime Blog Posts this month. I'm tired and there are too many other things going on in life at the moment. (Thoughts of my no doubt less-than-helpful emails to my two youngest and my letter to my son B, currently supported by Brazoria County, and I shake those off.) Maybe I can do a blog post on the days evenly divisible by ten. I still gather ideas, though.  There were better sunbathing pictures, but not safer ones!  For instance I drove to work this morning a little later than usual. In the Houston area that usually means glaring sunshine and maximum air conditioning, but this is the start of the two weeks (I hope) in the fall when the weather...