3 year olds

You know that the 3yo has older siblings when she runs around the house yelling "Help, there's a disembodied hand!" I had to stop my cooking. She ran into the kitchen saying, "Moma, look, it's a disembodied hand." She slid her arm out of her shirt sleeve and made her hand come up under her shirt, grabbing her neck. She pretended to be choking herself. But she had a huge grin on her face. I really should have asked her what "disembodied" means....

Floor update

Does this saga ever end?? Okay, so the next guy didn't want to do my floors. He accepted the job, then decided he only wanted to work with prefinished. So he backed out. Should I be paying attention to this? Then I was able to talk with the man who was selling me the wood. Sure, he would do it....for 3 times the price of the other guys! maybe not. After asking around, I found yet another young man. He had trained with the best and was now out on his own. He came highly recommended. I called. He answered. He is now hired! but we were once again awaiting the availability of the wood. This is the construction saga....always waiting. There are some grain elevators being torn down in town. This wood is coming from the pea bins. It's beautiful, so hopefully it will be worth the wait.

So the new floor guy had a week available. The wood man said "sure the wood should be available then" Well, true to form, the wood was not. I begged. The wood guy says "I only have a portion of it." It's enough for one of the rooms, so I ask if I may get it. Now, the irritating part is that the weather had been wonderful all week. The day I begged for the wood, it had begun to rain. We haven't seen rain in a long while. But of course that day it rained. What I didn't know was that my wood had been sitting out in the elements all this time! sigh... So I frantically find a friend with a large bed pickup truck (plenty of those around these parts), and we meet to load up the soaking wood. We then had to unload it into my house so it could begin the drying out process. That was Friday.

Monday morning the floor guy comes to check out the moisture content. Still too wet. I'm trying to be patient. Really, I am..... Maybe I'll find another location for the open house I'm supposed to have in 2 wks....

Works? Faith?

Are we saved by our works? May it never be!

We are saved by faith! But our works are the evidence of our faith.

James 2:17 "Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself."

and again

James 2:26 "For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead."

What are your works? How do you treat your neighbor? What are the evidences of your faith?

Vain repetitions

Congregational participation in worship involves the people reciting prayers with the pastor. They can all worship together, and no one is a passive participant. But some have been critical of written prayers, calling them "vain repetitions." Do not these critics sing hymns or psalms that have been previously written? Why do these previously written sung prayers not qualify as "vain repetitions?" The problem lies not with the written prayer, but with the person reciting the prayer. Is his heart in it? Is he carefully reciting and sincerely believing what he's saying? Or is he merely reciting while his heart is elsewhere? The same can be asked of the person who is passively sitting or standing (while someone else spontaneously prays, sometimes droning on and on, attempting to pray the entire promises in scripture all at one time).

just some musings....