Fun Things.

So this is how my week went. I spent part of 3 days on the mainland looking after The Child ~ the grizzly, cold~ridden grump, then 2 days recovering from the trauma of it all & another day on the mainland to celebrate The Girl's birthday...& pretty cheerful about it all because I wasn't supposed to be preaching this week & I figured it has been so long since I had a week of I could afford to be a little laid back. I should never suppose anything.

I got 48 hours notice that my preacher had been unexpectedly called away & I would have less than 24 hours to come up with something!  This does not make me happy ~ despite the fact I regularly terrify those in the know by writing sermons @ the last minute.  Wonderful for the concentration ~ like the quip that the imminent prospect of death really focuses the mind!

Just the same there are some sermons that require a little more cooking than others. OT, who arrived to put in the microwave unit & the phone shelf, was most unsympathetic.  As a preacher himself he considers all one needs to do is pull out a bible passage & expound on it for 45 minutes ~ only that's not how I work!

 I have a 3~fold gift & one prong of that is teaching.  I am chronically incapable of simply expounding a passage until I have pulled it through the mangle of the actual Greek [or Hebrew], looked at what it is really saying & then looking at ways & means to apply this to everyday life.

I had the jump~off point several weeks ago [Romans 12:2] & as so often happens for me I had found some excellent teaching that would be very helpful from a practical point ~ only I hadn't listened to all of it, & a great little story illustration ~ I swear, this stuff just lands in my lap! ~ & hadn't stressed because I was supposed to have another week, wasn't I?

Even so, I got up Saturday morning & wasted several hours on Skype with my wonderful American friend, Seeking, then pottered round making coffee & considering my Farmville2 disaster, while I let the Holy Spirit percolate the whole concept of renewing one's mind on the backburner of mine.  No stress.  Seriously.

Once I get going I then just steam ahead because the Holy Spirit gets in there & just starts plonking it down: bing, bang, bong! I was getting along great guns & feeling pretty happy with how it was all going.  I'd got all my definitions sorted & was halfway through, heading into the more difficult aspects when our internet dropped out. No immediate panic.  I always save my work as I go.  At the worst I would only lose a line or so & probably easily recovered.

I don't know what happened but the whole blooming thing disappeared on me!  It was not on the clipboard.  It was not in *recover*.  Undo did nothing. After 5 minutes I realised I was in dire trouble. In 10, I wept.  All my work was gone & all to be done over again, on a day when I had a limited number of hours to pull this whole thing together! And despite everything I had just learnt about neurological pathways, about the way the brain is wired & the cause & effect of our thinking in purely physical ways.  Ouch.

Then, naturally, the printer refused to print & I spent a frustrating hour replacing ink cartridges, cleaning heads & nozzles & aligning things before it would even consider following commands.

Of course the other thing is somebody does not want me getting up & preaching this. The niggling, *not sick sick, just a little unwell* feeling that has plagued me all year suddenly bloomed into a full blown* My throat!  My throat!* of raging germs. I need all the spare prayers I can get.

Now that the sermon is safely finished, printed out & safely ensconced in my little black folder I think the whole thing is hugely funny.  It always is after but just at the time...well, I can think of more pleasant things that might have happened.