Dec. 10 - Dec. 16

[ to post your entry click "comments" below ]

9 comments:

Tim Suttle said...

I prayed the hours from the BCP today. I'm going to try and do that throughout advent as much as possible. There was a really interesting quote from Thomas Merton:

"[A publisher asked me to write something on 'The Secret of Success,' and I refused.] If I had a message to my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success. ... If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted. If a university concentrates on producing successful people, it is lamentably failing in its obligation to society and to the students themselves."

I wonder, could you insert "church" for the word "university" in the last sentence?

Peace,

-t

Kristen said...

hi guys.

I am asking for prayer today. Taven woke up not walking this morning..he will not put any weight on this right leg at all. I took him to Dr. Miller and he adjusted him and said that his knee was out. He wanted Taven to walk on it but he wouldn't. Then Miller did the reflex test on his knee and the right knee didn't respond at all. He asked if he had jumped of anything and of corse he has...it's Taven. I talked to Chris Pittenger after that and she told me to get xrays. I am just hoping that the hasn't broken anything and there is a logical explaniation as to why he didn't respond to the relfex test. I am waiting for my neighbor to get home so Skylee can go over there and then we are off to Children's Mercy. Please pray for little T that there is nothing majorly wrong with his leg.

thanks
kd

Anonymous said...

this morning i was reflecting on the story of abram again, and specifically on the idea of whether or not i trust God right now. Prov. 3 says to 'trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding'. the reality is that i am having a really hard time fully trusting in God right now, trusting that he is at work, trusting that he is interested in using me in ministry, trusting that he is somehow working in my life/ministry in this season. deep down i know that he is, but that's hard to turn into concrete trust and even peace.

kristen, let us know as soon as you hear something about tavin.
i'm praying.

kevinc said...

tonight allison and i read a chapter from a dallas willard book i'm reading, called the great omission. here is a line from the intro:

There is a great disparity between, on the one hand, the hope for a life expressed in Jesus, and on the other hand, the actual day to day behavior, inner life and social presence of most of those who now profess adherence to him.

This has been a convicting idea for me, both personally, and for us as a community. How much of a disparity exists for most h.k10ers? How much help is our church actually in bridging this gap? are we really making disciples in any significant ways?

allison and i spent some time praying about this, and about the direction for our church, and it was really cool to begin to feel my heart move again for people and to really start caring again about this stuff. its amazing what a night of reading and praying with your spouse can do (as opposed to flipping channels...)

Kristen said...

thank you for your prayers for Taven. All we know at this point is that there is not a break or dislocation. The doctor said that if he starts having any sort of cold like symptoms or a fever to take him in right away b/c that is a sign of an infection, who knew! So, it's a waiting game for the next couple of days. He is putting weight on it so that's a good sign. I am interested to see what the morning brings.

As I was sitting in the urgent care center I felt so helpless. I couldn't do anything for my own child. I had to completely rely on God and trust that the doctors knew what they were doing. I thought back to the the Andy Stanley DVD that my community group has been watching about surrendering completely to God, even in the things we think we have control over. This is something I have to do on a daily basis.

thank you for a community of friend that I can call on at any time for support.

thank you that I have health insurance.

thank you that kids handle "crisis" mode better than adults.

Mandy said...

I prayed the hours today.

I thought this was so good, it was worth sharing-

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

- Thomas Merton
New Seeds of Contemplation

Tim Suttle said...

Friday Confessions:

- I confess that I buried my head in books and completely ignored Kristin and the kids on Monday and Tuesday.

- I confess that On Wednesday afternoon I got to that point w/my kids where I was pretty much yelling at them for everything they did (I had them by myself). I was awful.

- I confess that I stayed up too late twice this week and made myself grumpy the whole next day.

- I confess that all of those stressy things in the above confessions went away when I found out I got a good grade on my last paper. I was just stressed out about school and making everyone else pay for it.

- I confess that I know that this time of year stresses Kristin out way more than me. She has a lot more things to keep track of - shopping, family events, etc., and I’m really not that helpful. I judge her for stressing about that, but expect her to be supportive of me when I’m stressed about school.

- I confess that I’m a hypocrite.

kevinc said...

i missed a couple of posts this week...(this is kevin, in case something got screwed up with my sign in name...)so i'll try to catch up here. all week i've been carving out the first 30 minutes of my work day reading and praying through stuff. it has been a really fruitful habit. i also have been re-reading a book by henri nouwen called life of the beloved and it has been really impactful. the idea of the book is that our core id is that we are God's beloved. i spend so much time trying to find my worth/id/value in so many insignificant ways, if i could just get it through my head that i am God's beloved, no matter what, i think so many things would lose their importance in my life.

Confessions (2 days late)

i was really short with my kids a couple of times b/c they were 'interfering' with what i wanted to be doing.

i continue to be hurried almost all the time.

while working on a sermon on humility, i felt very proud a few times.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I didn't get on this week. It was a good week, but busy. Okay, that's still not an excuse to not blog. I had a wonderful time praying yesterday while walking out in the snow and cold. Praying has been the thing I've not been the best at doing lately. I've been reading scripture, but not slowing down to pray. We did the story of David and the ark today and how David "danced." I love how uninhibited David could be at times. I love how when he got things wrong- he got them so wrong and when he got them right, he got them so write. Our house group really leaned in to John 15 tonight. We really talked and confessed about the way God will seek you and prune you....for Him. It was a cool night where we really challenged each other to grow in Christ. We decided as a group that just being good friends was not enough....that we had to take it to the next level. It was awesome!