things I do every day

This week someone challenged me on the amount of time and energy I spend on my immediate family, all of whom live quite a distance from me. Yes, they are right, I should have more consistent contact with them. It is important. One can often tell what is important in one's life by the frequency of it.

Here are the things I do every day:
1. sleep
2. eat
3. breathe
4. laugh
5. pray
6. clean something
7. talk to Dean
8. write

And here are things I do almost every day:
1. exercise
2. buy food
3. talk to my friends
4. play with my cats
5. read my Bible
6. dream
7. go outside
8. read a book
9. office work
10. do something nice for someone

And here are things I would like to do more often:
1. have meaningful and generous contact with my family and friends
2. travel
3. spend time with Dean
4. be content
5. learn important lessons
6. love consistently
7. be fearless
8. enjoy God

This is a picture of the remarkable French Onion Soup prepared by Greg for last night's supper.

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Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...

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outWORD by Matte Downey

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