Whadda Weekend

Slide Into Monday Playlist:
(The Playlist is what's ripping the fabric off the speaker grilles while I'm at the BB keyboard.)

Roger Hurricane Wilson (Can't Find My Way Home, Slide Sequence 3) Son House (Death Letter Blues) Johnny Cash & June Carter (If I Was A Carpenter, Ring of Fire)


Awesome weekend, eh?

Starting off on Saturday morning when I solved my NMEA VHS/GPS interface problem (and also finally identified what's been causing Ben's plumbing leak) through last night's 6PM, the past three days were incredible.

[I didn't forget to include Jenson Button's win for Honda in Sunday morning's Hungarian Grand Prix but there was too much FIA pre-race drama and rain-soaked tension to recap here, except to mention this: 7th-place finisher Robert Kubica was disqualified after his BMW Sauber was weighed and found to be 4.4 pounds underweight following the race, a violation or Article 4.1

The disqualification moves Felipe Massa up to seventh place, with Michael Schumacher eighth despite not finishing the race. That means Ferarri's Schumacher is now just ten points behind Fernando Alonso in the drivers’ championship standings, while Ferrari is only seven points behind Renault for the constructors’ crown.]

What About Last Night?

I grew up like most Southern Baptists, thinking spiritual gifts only meant singing or playing the organ (preaching wasn't a gift, it seemed more like a punishment. As a kid I figured preachers must've done something really awful that got God's attention and had to spend the rest of their lives atoning, by warning others about the consequences of being bad).

I never considered that spiritual gifts could also include wisdom, patience or leadership. Since I lack any trace of any of those gifts, last night I realized how much patience is overlooked.

In the past two years I've gotten better, sorta, about screaming at minivan pilots and throwing stuff at drive-thru windows. But I'm still struggling when it comes to having patience with folks who can't see that even though I'm not always right, I'm hardly ever wrong (and when I am, falling to the floor with a tongue-biting, wall-kicking conniption fit usually gives me an out).

Last night I learned that nobody always likes the way things are done all the time, and if we're focusing 100% of our energy into putting Jesus Christ first ... not just for an hour of worship on Sunday mornings but in every waking moment ... then we might find there's not enough time left at the end of the day to squabble and bicker over insignificant, trivial details like boycotts, stained glass windows or whether to allow raising more than one arm at a time during hymns.

Every second we spend debating whether Adam had a navel is a second lost to witnessing ... because witnessing means more than standing on street corners holding up hand-painted BOYCOTT SIN! signs or sliding You're Headed for Hell, Mister tracks under peoples' doors.

Witnessing reveals Christ more completely in the little things we do when we're not even aware of it, like being patient, kind and forgiving, than He's revealed through publicity-oriented stunts like movie boycotts or CD-burning bonfires ... or through a set of draconian "covenants" intended to self-righteously prove how "holy" or "religious" we feel about ourselves ... especially when we're around people we disagree with.

Shouldn't people be seeing Christ living inside us the most in the little things we do ... like how we treat and act toward each other [clues here include Matthew 22:39, & Matthew 25:41-46], by being patient (not sweating the small stuff) , humble [1 Pete 1:18], and in realizing that if we have eternal life through Grace then everything else is all small stuff)?

Last night I saw the importance of being patient with other Christians who might not necessarily agree with me on every single negotiable theological question (like, How often should you have your mouth washed out with soap for saying "gosh" and "golly"?).

It's just not that important or worth arguing and fussing about, so long as we agree on the non-negotiables. We're on the same team, after all.

Ultimately we've only got one commission ... and if you're still whining about trying to find the one pure and faultless religion, the best place to start looking is here.

Now if we could just form a feasibility committee and vote on a way to stop all that clapping during the service, and make the pastor tuck in his shirt tail, and start having Sunday School, and have a Suggestions Box for picking songs like we did at my old church ....