Life at the Lake

My cousin is having surgery at 2:00 Central time today to remove his cancerous prostate. We’re praying that the anesthesiologist will “get it right,” that the surgeon will have steady hands, and that God will be doing his healing work in it all.

Karin’s friend’s nephew is staying for the rest of the week. He’s pretty excited about that. Yesterday saw some serious boarding and tubing on the lake. Daughter Sue will arrive before lunch today, and Jeremy and his friends need to leave soon after lunch. Friday morning Jeremy and several others begin a 10-day bicycle road trip from Jackson, Michigan, to Nashville, Tennessee, for the International Youth Congress. There, Jeremy will have the privilege of giving a report about his time in Africa last October through April.

Chuck and I took a canoe ride yesterday, as well as a morning and evening walk.

Peterson’s The Jesus Way continues to stretch my mind and my soul. He’s talking about Abraham as the “father” of the way of faith. “What did these writers [Paul and others] see in Abraham that they named faith? Was it not this lifetime of internalizing the commanding and promising but invisible God and then stepping out on the road in obedience? Was it not this readiness to leave wherever he was and leave whatever he had in order to embrace the vision, the covenant, the command? Was it not a life of responsive openness to God and a matching indifference to whatever conditions he found himself in? Was it not a lifetime disposition to receive God rather than to satisfy himself?”

The cool thing is that all the biblical stories of people who walked the way are so cryptic that we can’t possibly use them as a template for our lives. Each of us needs to listen to God’s voice—soft though it usually is—to discover His way for our walk each day. (I’m not talking about the Way to eternal life; that Way is Jesus for every one of us.)

I’m also reading This Immoral Trade about slavery in the 21st century. Get ready to be disturbed; I’ll write about that sometime soon I’m sure.

Blessings,
Carol