What I Write About

I write about the infinite number of intersections between every day life and the good news of the God who has come to get us.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Separating the Saints from the Cynics

It's been kind of a tough stretch for me recently.

On campus, a phenomenal August/September was followed up by a tired and flat October. I lost a sense of the bigger picture of what I was doing on campus. Our ministry was less creative and less engaging of the campus. I just found out today that a couple really great guys from our New Student Retreat left our ministry during our blah October to be a part of another fellowship. Our chapter retreat was great but our numbers were lower than I hoped (115) given our fabulous New Student Retreat (102 new students), further making me question the long-term results of all our work in August and September.

At home, Davis is fighting strep thoat, which makes it something like the eight-thousandth bug that one of the two kids have had since October 1. We've had a handyman team here for the past three days replacing our master shower that was basically rotting out because it was poorly installed. All in all over the past fifteen months we've spent over $9,000 in auto and home repair. Given that we don't have much margin each month and we want for Kelly to stay home with the kids, I'm starting to stress out as the savings are vaporizing.

And I'm just generally tired...a little spent after a full fall.

As I was whining to my good friend Marshall yesterday on the phone about all my woes, he asked me a question that made me stop and think: "What do you think God is trying to tell you in the midst of all of this?" I had to admit that I'd been skimming the surface of my relationship with God too much to have even given this a passing thought. But I think that this is the question that separates the saints from the cynics.

I'm not sure that I've come up with any stellar answers in the past 29 hours since he asked me that question, but I do feel like I'm starting to at least ask a better question.

On a completely un-related note, if you're surfing on-line and have a second, check out my latest blog link to the right, Redeeming Prufrock, by a UNC student who graduated last year. He's got some great posts and it's my new favorite blog to hit up.

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