A Fresh Start

It's Monday. A new week. A fresh start. I took Elliott back to school last night, after an enjoyable day with him and Peggy's parents. I even survived preaching, and I must admit that I felt better about this message and the delivery thereof, than I have of any sermon God has shared through me. Emily sang a special yesterday, and it was "Beautiful." No seriously, that was the name of the song she sang. She sang it beautifully. It was such a thrill to hear her sing the special, and to have Elliott and Ian on guitar and bass respectively in the praise band during the contemporary worship service. That was some of the most fun I have had in a long time!

Anyway, Elliott and I had a great heart-to-heart talk on the way back to Kissimmee last night. This is Finals week at Florida Christian College, and then he leaves for his Europe trip on Sunday, May 1st. I had a great prayer request-type talk with Elliott's room mates Andrew and Jason concerning Ian, and I had a long phone conversation with Peggy on the way home...keeping us both up well past our normal bed times, since I didn't get home until almost 1:00 AM.

Last night just before Youth Groups started (while I was up in the projection booth fixing last-minute bugs with my presenation), a member of Vero Christian Church came up to me and gave me an envelope, saying, "put this in your pocket." I did, and gave it no further thought until after I was finished with my devotional talk for Youth Groups. When I went back to the office, I pulled the envelope out to find a very generous check written out to me with the following notation in the memo line: "Elliott's car repair or ?"!!!!! It blew me away. God is so much better to me than I could ever possibly deserve. He uses His people to minister to one another in a variety of ways. I can never thank these precious people enough for the love, prayers and support they have always been and continue to be to my family and to me personally. See, I'm whining, and God is working. Time to stop whining and let God work through me, eh?

God has shown me over the past week that I must get out of my pity-party mode, and remember that He is King. He's still on the throne. Nothing that happened last week shocked Him off of the throne. So, with the start of a new week, comes the restart of a right attitude on my part. I am so glad that God is patient with me.

So, today, Monday April 25, 2005, it is Fresh Start Time. Just in the nick of time, too. I have bunches of stuff to take care of like a week of summer camp I have commited to leading, getting a couple of month's worth of worship services worked out, so I can be gone for camp, vacation, NACC, and CIY, and then the "normal" things I work on like lesson plans, devotionals, Senior Roast materials...whew, I'd be tired thinking about this even if I had not been driving on I-95 after midnight! Not complaining mind you, just stating fact.