The truth is we struggle to be truthful.  What I mean by that is we struggle to be filled with and full of truth.

White lies, half-truths, partial truths, and a penchant for exaggeration – all symptoms of the struggle.

The trouble with accountability is we are ashamed of telling the truth, ashamed that in the process of counting some things don’t quite add up.

Indiscretions?  Yes.  Small things?  Yes.  Important?  Of course.

It still doesn’t make sense even though we know full well that faithfulness in the little things is supposed to translate in faithfulness with the big things.

We want to be trusted with the big things but we slip in the small things (for one reason or another) and make more of a mess of it all in the struggle to be truthful.

The truth is we struggle to be truthful.  What I mean by that is we struggle to be filled with and full of truth.

We’re sitting in a training session right now.

Conference call, virtual meeting room, video projection, the works.

I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the memos prior to the training session.

We just learned it’s going to be four hours.

4 Hours?

The microwave was lonely.

She whimpered all night long. It was hard to hear.

So we reunited the family and installed the range & dishwasher.
 

They micro and range are both operational which means no more cooking in the garage!

We thought this day might never come.

Sinks are next.

Who cares if it approaching 9PM and the children were ready for bed?

Who cares if it wasn’t the best microwaved popcorn out there?

Who cares if we didn’t get all that we had planned to get done last night?

For, shortly before 9PM last evening we popped a bag of popcorn in our freshly installed microwave.

I made the mistake of checking our estimated house value on the home site Zillow yesterday.

True to form every $1 we’ve invested in the house has lowered the value of the house by $2.

Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

I then realized who is behind the sales pitch that says: "every $1 you spend on your house is $2 back." 

It’s what Home Depot and Lowes and the contractors say.

Much like the jeweler that says you should spend three months salary on the wedding ring. 

It will be nice and we will enjoy living in the completed project (we’d better) but it would have been interesting to enter the real estate market here in Stockton now instead of 8 months ago. 

That our recycling is being taken by someone else (who obviously needs it more than we do) is not the issue.

That whoever is taking our recycling keeps coming into our backyard is the issue.

I’m thinking about posting an appropriate bible verse on the side of the fence being used as the point of entry.

Any suggestions? 

In spite of the torrential rains (yes the garage took on water) we had a great weekend together.

The smaller posse from SOCAL drove up and helped us pull off our first Bluegrass Gospel night.

One of the best surprises of the evening was discovering our Youth Minister played the harmonica. (At one point I thought I heard the cattle on the trail).

No one stormed out so it must have sounded something like bluegrass – or is it because it didn’t sound like bluegrass?  That’s a tough call.

It’s hard to describe (in spite of all the work) how much fun it is to play together in a group like that and have people actually enjoy the experience.

Kudos to fellow blogger Kristi for bringing this video to my attention.

Nestled within a challenging portion of scripture (2 Corinthians 6) are these words:

"I will live with them and walk with them. And I will be their God, and they will be my people."

And with these words we see what God has been working to accomplish since the creation of the world.

Everything God is about and everything God does is captured in these words.

The redemptive work of God (his agenda) is to make these four things a reality:

I will live with them
I will walk with them
I will be their God
They will be my people

In a city like Stockton you’re never quite sure if revelers are celebrating the arrival of the new year with fireworks or gunfire.  

All the same, it’s best to just stay inside.

As I see it the new year gives us all an opportunity for a fresh start in some area of our life.

I imagine we all have things about us we’d like to change (for the better) ways in which we’d like to better handle things.

There’s nothing wrong with making the attempt.

As Eric Zorn wrote: 

Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.

Happy New Year!