Confessions From Mars Hill

Visit To Alabama

This weekend, Mandi and I came home to Alabama for a few days.  We both miss our families and it is always good to visit.  There are a couple of things that I wanted to blog about before I forget.

- I went to Jack's (not the same as Jack's in FTL) for breakfast and an old man waved at me.  He used all his fingers to wave.  It was nice. I miss people who are generous and polite.

- Dad told me that there has been several Air Conditioning units that have been stolen in the area.  This is probably because of the amount of copper in them which is worth quite a bit right now.  Most of the thefts have been at churches.  One church put one of those "godspeaks" signs up that says, "I know who stole my units. - God"

- There are many large people.  I miss southern cooking, but I know that I would be morbidly obese if I had good barbecue around me.

- This place is beautiful.   

Good Friday

For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21

John Piper's Father

Yesterday, I read that John Piper's father died.  Piper posted a journal entry on the website about his thoughts during his dad's final minutes.  It is the most moving thing that I have read in a while.

You can read it here.

Finding Beauty

Yesterday, Mandi and I were talking about the “sin” of busy-ness.  We were thinking about all of the things that we were doing in the week as a part of our routine.  We are too busy.  We claim that it is something that is necessary and there is nothing that we can cut from the schedule. 
But in doing a lot of things, I realized that we weren’t paying attention to the people that we say we love.  I found out that a couple of our students went through a breakup recently. When I called to find out when this happened, I was told that it had been over 2 months ago, and I was too busy to notice.  I am in repentance right now. I know me and I am sure that I will justify more busy life later, but for now I repent.

I am trying to slow down in order to notice things.

• We have a new door handle at our building.  It is nice and we needed it.  I miss the old one, but the new one is shiny.

• I also noticed that the creepy guy who dresses up like Uncle Sam and waves at people outside of Liberty Tax Service was asleep at the bus stop next to where he stands.  He was wearing his uniform.  It made me laugh.

• I don’t like talking to people who have conspiracy theories about everything government and then want me to share them with the media.  Real life John Nash stuff weirds me out.  But the smile that they give me when they were able to vent is worth it.  That just happened.

• My wife is beautiful.

• Red Beans and Rice tastes good with friends and another fine episode of THE OFFICE.