Month of Sundays July 3, 2022

We are on a mini vacation. The little kid is sleeping, the big kid is off on a mission, and all the other adults are on a boat. My workload has been pretty heavy the last few weeks and while the benefits are great, I have once again let my writing and diet and exercise fall off. Wednesday, I start again for a routine that makes sure I can keep going.

I found a gap in my system. My sermon notes are in my daily notes rather than my studies notes. Whoever came up with that system messed it up.

The first sermon in one notebook was about the first night (and all four were on romance and real life).  The second is about worship. The other notebook holds one on conflict and a last one on supporting one another. These are probably aspects of marriage I should be working on right now.

The wedding night for a man is probably like the wedding afternoon for a woman, something that you have held out as a great expectation since early on in life. I doubt anyone ever understood this difference without a lot of help before it actually happens. I certainly noticed the two of us had different priorities. (And now that I have on the right glasses, I can see two things at once.) The sermon might help young people near that stage, but it seems the pastor’s focus was on letting us old married people understand the potential benefits of understanding the views of every night in the eyes of a husband and a wife. I do not feel led to step through the details, but for this aspect of marriage to be better, effort has to go into making it so outside the time frame within which it occurs. Who knew?

Conflict is inevitable in most every aspect of life. I had a dream that I was willing to take on a full-time role where I am working. I awoke to great conflict over how to make sure that thought never occurred again. Conflict between husband and wife can be brutal costing lives or scarring lives of adults and children forever. I cannot see two loving adults in Christ coming to blows, but apparently it happens. The goal of the sermon was that we respond and not react. That we think about what we do or say and their consequences before we do or say them. That we remember we love this person and that our goal is not to win alone, but to come along side.

One of the aspects of marriage that my life before led me to hold fast to was “til death do we part.” It was not a sign of conflict, but a sign of a mutual goal and the ability to know that through trials, the win was together. There are lots of things my wife does well that I do not. There are a handful that I do better. When we rely on each other, but get things done better. But when we encourage each other, we get things done together. I am sure I do not give the duration of our marriage its proper place in prayer, but it is because I whole heartly expect nothing else and do so with faith that God has already done this for us.

Worship is sometimes thought of as Sunday morning in church. I am not in church this Sunday, but I feel as though I am worshipping God where I sit. (Having remembered a mouse would have made it a little more so.) The Bible gives us examples of people worshipping in every circumstance and I do not know how to understand it, but I feel we are called to both pray and worship without ceasing. The sermon says our worship is to be active, to be integrated with wisdom, to be tender, and to be an everlasting destination. I like to picture my relationship with God as tender as that of me and my little ones when they were helpless. I often feel helpless and ask God to provide. Wisdom and worship together with prayer.

And amazingly, I am caught up with a months of Sundays, actually four months. Amazing how much of my time at church is in service and not in service. Amazing that I keep using that word. One of my goals is to live life in service to God, but I am trying to change this to living life in service with God. A small word change, but what I expect to be a powerful change in impact. I pray that God will continue to use me and help me do those things that make me more so.