Walking with Jesus

. I went to church this morning, but it wasn't easy. Olivia is not feeling well, but I really felt like I needed to go to worship. So, I decided to stay close to home in case Olivia needed me. I had my phone on vibrate. I didn't know where I was going to go, but I started early, prayed, and drove. How hard can it be to find a place to worship in a town that used to hold the world record for most churches per person in a city? If only I'd known! I drove down the block to the church on the corner. It's a small congregation i a big building, located near the University where we take Gracey for walks. They feel called to college students. It even has free meals for college students who attend on Sunday mornings. They don't have a pastor, but show sermons from a church network via recording. What it didn't have was any indication of what time there services were held, so I kept driving. I wondered if other's do the same. I came to another church, and while...

"Time heals all things," they say, but that isn't all it does. Time also makes us forget. Time is like a huge rope floating in a vast ocean. It floats completely below the surface, but far from the bottom (if there is one). The water is God, saturating, supporting, surrounding. He holds and infuses it all from beginning to end. Our lives, however, run like fibers along the strands of the rope Time, twisting and turning, moving around each other, sometimes strong, sometimes frayed, sometimes broken. As we move along our strand of the rope Time, we go through comfortable and hard times. We don't see the hard times coming, and we're quick to forget the hard times we cause others after they are gone. We may feel guilty for a while. We may feel like we should connect with them again and appologize, or at least confess to the whole or to the water the injury we have done to another on their journey. But, after a while that portion of our strand falls further behind ...

. Last night I dreamt there was a talent show or something in my old High School Auditorium. My friend Tim was up as a crowd slowly filled the room, and I along with some other guys we used to work with at Beltway were moving all over the stage picking up wires and cleaning up after Tim as he moved from instrument to instrument, others joining in as according to his changes. We were having fun with it, being silly. I was sitting on the floor behind the drums (not playing them) and I had just decided to pick up a mic and sing something when Tim (now on guitar) began singing this upbeat worship song. I think it originally had a bridge, but I don't remember it, because it took me a moment to realize that this song was completely new. I just sat there listening, all thoughts of performing vanquished from my mind, as worship broke forth. As I wrote down these words this morning and sang this "new song unto the Lord" I realized that they were about Olivia, about me, about lo...