🙂 A good week at school. Actually two or three in a row. We had homecoming two weeks ago and usually that is a hard week, followed by a week of getting everyone back into academic mode (which a lot of them never get to). Bu this year, homecoming week went smoothly with the students not getting all worked up, and the last two weeks have gone well. I might actually enjoy this year.
😦 D2 broke off her courtship since she didn’t feel like she loved the man. 27 and single doesn’t give her much opportunity to find the right man. We hope she and the man get back together. They are still friends, so it wasn’t a breakup for the wrong reason.
😦 The chill of fall is here, along with wet weather.
🙂 It’s usually Misten’s favorite time of the year, and with our cool summer after the very snowy winter, she never had a non-favorite season this year. She wanted to be outside most of the day all summer, and that’s highly unusual. That’s usually her fall thing.
😦 A series of things needed to be done on the second car (the one we kept for the girls) . . . though 🙂 we now feel better about the car, since it is safer for the girls.
😦 We had the funeral this week for the first of the girls’ grandparents. (You know, it’s a little weird to be at a funeral for your husband’s first wife’s father. For example, my husband and I didn’t “fit” in any photos: they had the children together, and she would have been in that photo but of course I was not, then they had spouses join for another photo, and we weren’t in that one either, though he would have been if she was still alive. They had the grandchildren, and our girls were in that one, and the great-grandchildren, but no photo for “former in-laws and their new spouses.”)
🙂 My husband and I chose the warmest day this week to explore a new (to us) place to hike. It was swampy, so many trails were “closed” to us without rubber boots, but we saw a lot of birds (mostly goldfinches–they were everywhere, but I didn’t get photos of them–but also a cormorant, a yellow-rumped warbler, and others) and some fall color on trees, and lots and lots of flowers that were going to seed. It was definitely “the pretty side of fall.”
🙂 My husband was reimbursed for mileage for the trip we took to Grand Rapids two weeks ago . . . and since we drive a Prius the gas costs are minimal, so the check covers the price of our trip, including the $200 in books we bought at three bookstores. He was pretty tickled about that.
🙂 Today we’re getting together with high school friends and their spouses for a potluck at the midpoint between us.
😦 I feel like I’m heading into round 2 of a cold (I think it’s the eating cafeteria style, even though I use a wipe on my hands after I sit down, I still have touched everything that all the students have touched) yuck
🙂 Thanksgiving next weekend and husband invited his co-worker from Romania and his family to join us. 😦 I’m a little overwhelmed at the prep while working full time
🙂 A pick up load of free pine firewood this morning – sweet!
😦 I seem to have an early season cold coming on — and in the middle of a blistering, dry autumn heat wave that’s ruining our Halloween pumpkins!
😦 Our Dodgers & Angels both lost games yesterday. But it ain’t over yet.
🙂 My friend Norma got through her medical test OK yesterday. Now waiting for the results ….
😦 Had to write the obit for a local (calvary chapel) pastor who died unexpectedly Thursday. He’d been pastor there (one of the biggest ‘mega’ churches in our area with 9,000 attending) for nearly 35 years, so very hard for folks in a church to lose a pastor of that many years.
😦 ISIS and yet another beheading. Can’t even imagine what these families must go through. And apparently up next: a 26-year-old Indiana native and former Army ranger who was taken hostage while he was trying to help out in Syria. The irony is that he already had converted to Islam.
🙂 I love how God can use us if all we do is show up. The Good Samaritan was just walking along the road when he stumbled upon someone in need whom God put in his path.
🙂 I thought of that often this week as my husband went to DC to an energy conference and took his 24ish intern with him. The guy, an electrical engineer/would-be energy specialist grad student, had never been east of the Mississippi.
The point of having an intern, for my husband, is to expose and train. This is a well-paid internship I might add. 🙂
Totally eye-opening for this young man on several fronts: the professional but also the personal. My husband insisted during their 3 hour lunch break that the walk down to the Mall and visit the Smithsonian. He took him to the Air and Space Museum (of course; our boys’ favorite) and wowed him with insight. (My husband’s father helped build the lunar module–which is there. I think . . . whatever is there, he helped build. :-))
But of even more importance were the personal discussions. As our intern spent more and more time with R, he asked for more advice–which R is more than happy to give. (We’ve been married a long time and are perhaps too much like each other in this respect).
The kid drank up this knowledge and my husband just laughed about it. “Oswald Chambers calls us to be ourselves and as mentors we should embarrass our “followers” by simply living our lives and letting them draw the conclusions.”
(Our take on the idea).
The intern’s live-in fiancee, raised a Catholic, has started attending the Methodist Church in Silicon Valley where she sings in the choir. She’s joining the church tomorrow and he’ll be there to watch. Let’s pray the seeds God planted in his heart this week while traveling with a godly man, will give him plenty of opportunity to think and be moved.
Let the Holy Spirit be at work in B and A’s lives this weekend.
Peter, I take issue with your statement “27 and single doesn’t give her much opportunity to find the right man.” My second sibling just got married in her early thirties. She wanted to get married since she was old enough, but she waited on the Lord and He gave her the right man (he is a good sort, though a bit of a tease as those of you who are on FB might have seen) at the right time. I hope your daughter will find that her friend is worth loving (and that she will understand love isn’t just a warm feeling); but her prospects do not end at 30. If that were so, then I’m doomed – I’ll be thirty in about a month!
And to think my mother was not quite twenty and her mom was not happy when her younger sister married first—not because the younger one married, but because my mom should have been married first. My grandmother was worried her daughter would be an old maid!
It is not so uncommon for marriage that late in life anymore.
Although, marriage is not built on feelings, I would be concerned with someone marrying if they express doubt like that. Better to wait or remain single.
I was 28 when I married, and I was the first one of my good friends from high school to do so. Don’t worry, Peter, she has plenty of time… All seven of us eventually married and only one has been divorced.
😄 Time with my Hubby at the ranch. Late night uninterrupted talks. Anytime uninterrupted talks! I love my children, but sometimes it’s nice to have a weekend away…
😄 Connie: Without her, these weekends away wouldn’t be possible.
😄 Becca’s new school.
😄 I’ve felt a special closeness to Jesus all week. I feel especially grateful for His love and merciful heart. Evidence of His grace abounds around me.
😞 L. missed three days of school this week due to a virulent stomach virus. Becca had it first and she also threw up for three and a half days…it was a mean one.
😄 I have not succumbed to the dreaded virus… (This is truly a miracle as I’ve always had the immune system of an AIDS patient–I catch everything. I was a sickly child and continue to get more viruses than the average person. And, yes, I wash my hands all the time).
😃 Becca’s new school. Yes, I know I already said that. But, I’m so happy about it, I had to say it twice! I feel about ten pounds lighter and she is so much happier. She’s made some friends already and seems to look forward to each new day. She joined the gardening club and planted lavender after school this week. When I picked her up at 4:45 (after dropping her off at 8:15), she was sweaty and happy, saying, “Mom, the gardening club is so cool! I wish they had it every day instead of once a week!” It warms my heart to see her thriving.
From my limited experience, it seems these days that a few people marry fairly young, as early as right out of high school up through right out of college. (I know, right out of college didn’t seem “young to marry” a few years ago.) But after that, people for the most part just aren’t marrying until late twenties, sometimes later. I don’t think that is good–if I had a son, I’d be encouraging him to think about earlier marriage–but it is reality.
When I was in my twenties, I knew no one who had married for the first time (not remarriage) past thirty, and so once I passed 30 I figured I was single for life, and I was content with that. (I did know one person who had married for the first time past 30–but she was about 70 and married a widower, and so her marriage didn’t seem relevant to the question of whether it was realistic to expect marriage after 30.)
Anyway, in my mid 30s I moved to Nashville, and there I found a few people who married past 30, and I also began to hear more stories about the successes of online dating. (I also heard the horror stories, so I knew to proceed with care.) I also ended up with greater desire to marry, and more awareness that long-term singleness was not what I wanted (largely that I simply didn’t want to live alone, and yet I was finding long stretches of living alone paired with shorter stretches of having a housemate, and the housemates were all mid-twenties . . . I just didn’t want to be 60 with a 25-year-old housemate, or 60 and advertising yet again for the privilege of interviewing strangers to see which one I should let live with me, among the few who were even still interested themselves).
Marriage past 30 is definitely still possible (44-year-old bride here), but I really don’t think it’s ideal for that to be the norm. And I really think it’s foolish to marry at 27 or later and plan on waiting five years to have children. Something has to “give” at some point. This isn’t really sustainable for a culture to de-emphasize marriage. (I know that lots of singles say the church puts too great an emphasis on marriage, but I never found that to be the case. And obviously most single men in their twenties feel no “pressure” to find a wife, though there are plenty of good ones to be found.)
😦 The guy who teaches Hebrews for our SS class was away today. He told me that he was going to be away, so I spent several hours preparing the lesson (It usually takes 3 hrs, minimum). When I got to SS this morning, I happened to ask the director of progress in getting a permanent teacher. It’s a good thing I did, because he said he has a teacher for today and next Sunday.
I don’t mind that someone else taught. He did a good job. It just bugs me about the communications problem. The SS department director was really embarrassed.
But it’s over now. And it’s ok. Only, I am not preparing another lesson until someone says, “Charlie, will you teach next Sunday?”
I had a big thing prepared for Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace….” With some illustrations, because that promise means a lot to me.
I may comment on it later.
I was preparing the SS lesson for today. The lesson is Hebrews 4:14-5:6. I came to consider 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” I prepared to use the Illustration from Isaiah 37:14, where Hezekiah spread the letter before the LORD. (I would tell the entire story, you may read Ch. 36-37 if you’re interested.) And I had made a note in my loose leaf Bible to warn of presumption. You can take boldness too far.
However I thought of a situation I had just read in O’Reilly’s book Killing Patton. It was during the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans had penetrated our lines and surrounded Bastogne. O’Reilly tells of a prayer Patton (an Episcopalian) prayed (he had written the prayer, so we have it verbatim) in a Catholic chapel. It is a long prayer. I was only going to read this part: ”Sir, this is Patton talking,” he says, speaking candidly to the Almighty. ”The past fourteen days have been straight hell. Rain, snow, more rain, more snow – and I am beginning to wonder what’s going on in Your headquarters. Whose side are You on anyway?” …(a page later) “Today I visited several hospitals, full of frostbite cases, and the wounded are dying in the fields because they cannot get brought back for medical care”….”Sir, I have never been an unreasonable man. I am not going to ask You to do the impossible. I do not even insist upon a miracle, for all I request is four days of clear weather”
It’s hard to imagine a real prayer more crass than this. BUT IT WORKED.! You know the story. The weather cleared, the P-47’s shot up the German tanks, Patton (Lt. Col Creighton Abrams) relieved Bastogne and the Germans were cut off. Later, another prayer by Patton. One of thanksgiving. ”Sir, this is Patton again”, he begins with an air of contrition. “And I beg to report complete progress. Sir, it seems to me that You have been much better informed about the situation than I was, because it was that awful weather which I cursed You so much which made it possible for the German army to commit suicide. That, Sir, was a brilliant military move, and I bow humbly to Your supreme genius.”
Then I would apply it to another real life situation. Nest post This is too long.
In 1955, having participated in much work with Campus Crusade for Christ, I thought I had been called to the ministry. So, I changed my major from Civil Engineering (2.5 yrs) to Psychology and planned to go to Southwestern Seminary. In 1957, I graduated in May,married in June and in September, we moved our house trailer to Fort Worth, Texas where I went to Southwestern for 4.5 years (to get a 3-year degree in theology). In Feb. ’62 we moved to Spartanburg, SC and I preached around, waiting for a call to a church. However, several wise pulpit committees decided not to call me.
You can well imagine my situation: We had a 5 year old boy, Elvera was working temporary as a secretary and I was a temporary GS-3 cartographic draftsman. It had been a year and a half and I was disparate. My prayer was something like this. “Lord, you know that this can’t go on. Something has to happen. Find a place for me, or get me into something else.” (More than that, but that’s the gist of it.)
Well, for some reason, I took the FSEE (Federal Service Entrance Exam), and with my civil engineering training and five points veteran preference, I aced the test. I was offered three jobs (One as an ‘’ammunition inspector” and positions as GS-5 cartographer in St. Louis, and Washington.) I took the one in Washington. And you know the rest of the story.
All of that is ancient history. But sometimes, when I am sitting on my porch thinking of how things were, I remember how desperate I was, and how immensely blessed I am. But part of it, I attribute to boldness in prayer.
Thanks, Chas. I remember doing that. It was in the process of the divorce and no support was coming. I ran out of money and a bill from my attorney came. I went into my bedroom and spread the letter out on the bed and got down on my knees. I prayed and wept over that bill and told God that I could not pay it and humbly asked him for help. It didn’t happen right away, but God paid the bill and I had the memory of His faithfulness.
Wandering Views 
I haven’t done this in a long time.
🙂 A good week at school. Actually two or three in a row. We had homecoming two weeks ago and usually that is a hard week, followed by a week of getting everyone back into academic mode (which a lot of them never get to). Bu this year, homecoming week went smoothly with the students not getting all worked up, and the last two weeks have gone well. I might actually enjoy this year.
😦 D2 broke off her courtship since she didn’t feel like she loved the man. 27 and single doesn’t give her much opportunity to find the right man. We hope she and the man get back together. They are still friends, so it wasn’t a breakup for the wrong reason.
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🙂 The colors of fall are starting.
😦 The chill of fall is here, along with wet weather.
🙂 It’s usually Misten’s favorite time of the year, and with our cool summer after the very snowy winter, she never had a non-favorite season this year. She wanted to be outside most of the day all summer, and that’s highly unusual. That’s usually her fall thing.
😦 A series of things needed to be done on the second car (the one we kept for the girls) . . . though 🙂 we now feel better about the car, since it is safer for the girls.
😦 We had the funeral this week for the first of the girls’ grandparents. (You know, it’s a little weird to be at a funeral for your husband’s first wife’s father. For example, my husband and I didn’t “fit” in any photos: they had the children together, and she would have been in that photo but of course I was not, then they had spouses join for another photo, and we weren’t in that one either, though he would have been if she was still alive. They had the grandchildren, and our girls were in that one, and the great-grandchildren, but no photo for “former in-laws and their new spouses.”)
🙂 My husband and I chose the warmest day this week to explore a new (to us) place to hike. It was swampy, so many trails were “closed” to us without rubber boots, but we saw a lot of birds (mostly goldfinches–they were everywhere, but I didn’t get photos of them–but also a cormorant, a yellow-rumped warbler, and others) and some fall color on trees, and lots and lots of flowers that were going to seed. It was definitely “the pretty side of fall.”
🙂 My husband was reimbursed for mileage for the trip we took to Grand Rapids two weeks ago . . . and since we drive a Prius the gas costs are minimal, so the check covers the price of our trip, including the $200 in books we bought at three bookstores. He was pretty tickled about that.
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🙂 Great week at the camp
🙂 Today we’re getting together with high school friends and their spouses for a potluck at the midpoint between us.
😦 I feel like I’m heading into round 2 of a cold (I think it’s the eating cafeteria style, even though I use a wipe on my hands after I sit down, I still have touched everything that all the students have touched) yuck
🙂 Thanksgiving next weekend and husband invited his co-worker from Romania and his family to join us. 😦 I’m a little overwhelmed at the prep while working full time
🙂 A pick up load of free pine firewood this morning – sweet!
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🙂 While this website is about my little Ebook series, it may be of interest in general to some of you:
http://christianfictionebooks.blogspot.com/2014/10/pre-order-12-brides-of-christmas-series.html
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🙂 Fun visit with daughter and grandsons. Simple pleasures together.
🙂 Fun evening attending a taping of a Music Roots show with Mac Wiseman and a variety of acts from Australia.
🙂 Fun couple of days at the Master’s Fiddle Championships.
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🙂 Sleeping in.
😦 I seem to have an early season cold coming on — and in the middle of a blistering, dry autumn heat wave that’s ruining our Halloween pumpkins!
😦 Our Dodgers & Angels both lost games yesterday. But it ain’t over yet.
🙂 My friend Norma got through her medical test OK yesterday. Now waiting for the results ….
😦 Had to write the obit for a local (calvary chapel) pastor who died unexpectedly Thursday. He’d been pastor there (one of the biggest ‘mega’ churches in our area with 9,000 attending) for nearly 35 years, so very hard for folks in a church to lose a pastor of that many years.
😦 ISIS and yet another beheading. Can’t even imagine what these families must go through. And apparently up next: a 26-year-old Indiana native and former Army ranger who was taken hostage while he was trying to help out in Syria. The irony is that he already had converted to Islam.
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🙂 I love how God can use us if all we do is show up. The Good Samaritan was just walking along the road when he stumbled upon someone in need whom God put in his path.
🙂 I thought of that often this week as my husband went to DC to an energy conference and took his 24ish intern with him. The guy, an electrical engineer/would-be energy specialist grad student, had never been east of the Mississippi.
The point of having an intern, for my husband, is to expose and train. This is a well-paid internship I might add. 🙂
Totally eye-opening for this young man on several fronts: the professional but also the personal. My husband insisted during their 3 hour lunch break that the walk down to the Mall and visit the Smithsonian. He took him to the Air and Space Museum (of course; our boys’ favorite) and wowed him with insight. (My husband’s father helped build the lunar module–which is there. I think . . . whatever is there, he helped build. :-))
But of even more importance were the personal discussions. As our intern spent more and more time with R, he asked for more advice–which R is more than happy to give. (We’ve been married a long time and are perhaps too much like each other in this respect).
The kid drank up this knowledge and my husband just laughed about it. “Oswald Chambers calls us to be ourselves and as mentors we should embarrass our “followers” by simply living our lives and letting them draw the conclusions.”
(Our take on the idea).
The intern’s live-in fiancee, raised a Catholic, has started attending the Methodist Church in Silicon Valley where she sings in the choir. She’s joining the church tomorrow and he’ll be there to watch. Let’s pray the seeds God planted in his heart this week while traveling with a godly man, will give him plenty of opportunity to think and be moved.
Let the Holy Spirit be at work in B and A’s lives this weekend.
Thanks.
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Peter, I take issue with your statement “27 and single doesn’t give her much opportunity to find the right man.” My second sibling just got married in her early thirties. She wanted to get married since she was old enough, but she waited on the Lord and He gave her the right man (he is a good sort, though a bit of a tease as those of you who are on FB might have seen) at the right time. I hope your daughter will find that her friend is worth loving (and that she will understand love isn’t just a warm feeling); but her prospects do not end at 30. If that were so, then I’m doomed – I’ll be thirty in about a month!
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And to think my mother was not quite twenty and her mom was not happy when her younger sister married first—not because the younger one married, but because my mom should have been married first. My grandmother was worried her daughter would be an old maid!
It is not so uncommon for marriage that late in life anymore.
Although, marriage is not built on feelings, I would be concerned with someone marrying if they express doubt like that. Better to wait or remain single.
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I still have a handsome twenty-seven year old son about to get a PhD . . .
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And I have a 45 year old son who is going to the Bakken for a better job.
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My sister didn’t marry until 31.
🙂 Great day spent eating, visiting, walking, antique auctioning and laughing with high school friends and their spouses
🙂 Even the dogs got along great and had fun together – poor Keva is exhausted tonight
🙂 Tim found a whole bunch of railroad spikes – now he can make our log coat rack
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I was 28 when I married, and I was the first one of my good friends from high school to do so. Don’t worry, Peter, she has plenty of time… All seven of us eventually married and only one has been divorced.
😄 Time with my Hubby at the ranch. Late night uninterrupted talks. Anytime uninterrupted talks! I love my children, but sometimes it’s nice to have a weekend away…
😄 Connie: Without her, these weekends away wouldn’t be possible.
😄 Becca’s new school.
😄 I’ve felt a special closeness to Jesus all week. I feel especially grateful for His love and merciful heart. Evidence of His grace abounds around me.
😞 L. missed three days of school this week due to a virulent stomach virus. Becca had it first and she also threw up for three and a half days…it was a mean one.
😄 I have not succumbed to the dreaded virus… (This is truly a miracle as I’ve always had the immune system of an AIDS patient–I catch everything. I was a sickly child and continue to get more viruses than the average person. And, yes, I wash my hands all the time).
😃 Becca’s new school. Yes, I know I already said that. But, I’m so happy about it, I had to say it twice! I feel about ten pounds lighter and she is so much happier. She’s made some friends already and seems to look forward to each new day. She joined the gardening club and planted lavender after school this week. When I picked her up at 4:45 (after dropping her off at 8:15), she was sweaty and happy, saying, “Mom, the gardening club is so cool! I wish they had it every day instead of once a week!” It warms my heart to see her thriving.
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From my limited experience, it seems these days that a few people marry fairly young, as early as right out of high school up through right out of college. (I know, right out of college didn’t seem “young to marry” a few years ago.) But after that, people for the most part just aren’t marrying until late twenties, sometimes later. I don’t think that is good–if I had a son, I’d be encouraging him to think about earlier marriage–but it is reality.
When I was in my twenties, I knew no one who had married for the first time (not remarriage) past thirty, and so once I passed 30 I figured I was single for life, and I was content with that. (I did know one person who had married for the first time past 30–but she was about 70 and married a widower, and so her marriage didn’t seem relevant to the question of whether it was realistic to expect marriage after 30.)
Anyway, in my mid 30s I moved to Nashville, and there I found a few people who married past 30, and I also began to hear more stories about the successes of online dating. (I also heard the horror stories, so I knew to proceed with care.) I also ended up with greater desire to marry, and more awareness that long-term singleness was not what I wanted (largely that I simply didn’t want to live alone, and yet I was finding long stretches of living alone paired with shorter stretches of having a housemate, and the housemates were all mid-twenties . . . I just didn’t want to be 60 with a 25-year-old housemate, or 60 and advertising yet again for the privilege of interviewing strangers to see which one I should let live with me, among the few who were even still interested themselves).
Marriage past 30 is definitely still possible (44-year-old bride here), but I really don’t think it’s ideal for that to be the norm. And I really think it’s foolish to marry at 27 or later and plan on waiting five years to have children. Something has to “give” at some point. This isn’t really sustainable for a culture to de-emphasize marriage. (I know that lots of singles say the church puts too great an emphasis on marriage, but I never found that to be the case. And obviously most single men in their twenties feel no “pressure” to find a wife, though there are plenty of good ones to be found.)
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😦 The guy who teaches Hebrews for our SS class was away today. He told me that he was going to be away, so I spent several hours preparing the lesson (It usually takes 3 hrs, minimum). When I got to SS this morning, I happened to ask the director of progress in getting a permanent teacher. It’s a good thing I did, because he said he has a teacher for today and next Sunday.
I don’t mind that someone else taught. He did a good job. It just bugs me about the communications problem. The SS department director was really embarrassed.
But it’s over now. And it’s ok. Only, I am not preparing another lesson until someone says, “Charlie, will you teach next Sunday?”
I had a big thing prepared for Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace….” With some illustrations, because that promise means a lot to me.
I may comment on it later.
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I would love to hear about Hebrews 4:16 and what it means to you, Chas.
😦 Missed church today again. Migraine and I’m coming down with another cold.
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😦 Also missing church due this cold.
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I was preparing the SS lesson for today. The lesson is Hebrews 4:14-5:6. I came to consider 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” I prepared to use the Illustration from Isaiah 37:14, where Hezekiah spread the letter before the LORD. (I would tell the entire story, you may read Ch. 36-37 if you’re interested.) And I had made a note in my loose leaf Bible to warn of presumption. You can take boldness too far.
However I thought of a situation I had just read in O’Reilly’s book Killing Patton. It was during the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans had penetrated our lines and surrounded Bastogne. O’Reilly tells of a prayer Patton (an Episcopalian) prayed (he had written the prayer, so we have it verbatim) in a Catholic chapel. It is a long prayer. I was only going to read this part:
”Sir, this is Patton talking,” he says, speaking candidly to the Almighty. ”The past fourteen days have been straight hell. Rain, snow, more rain, more snow – and I am beginning to wonder what’s going on in Your headquarters. Whose side are You on anyway?” …(a page later) “Today I visited several hospitals, full of frostbite cases, and the wounded are dying in the fields because they cannot get brought back for medical care”….”Sir, I have never been an unreasonable man. I am not going to ask You to do the impossible. I do not even insist upon a miracle, for all I request is four days of clear weather”
It’s hard to imagine a real prayer more crass than this. BUT IT WORKED.! You know the story. The weather cleared, the P-47’s shot up the German tanks, Patton (Lt. Col Creighton Abrams) relieved Bastogne and the Germans were cut off. Later, another prayer by Patton. One of thanksgiving.
”Sir, this is Patton again”, he begins with an air of contrition. “And I beg to report complete progress. Sir, it seems to me that You have been much better informed about the situation than I was, because it was that awful weather which I cursed You so much which made it possible for the German army to commit suicide. That, Sir, was a brilliant military move, and I bow humbly to Your supreme genius.”
Then I would apply it to another real life situation. Nest post This is too long.
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In 1955, having participated in much work with Campus Crusade for Christ, I thought I had been called to the ministry. So, I changed my major from Civil Engineering (2.5 yrs) to Psychology and planned to go to Southwestern Seminary. In 1957, I graduated in May,married in June and in September, we moved our house trailer to Fort Worth, Texas where I went to Southwestern for 4.5 years (to get a 3-year degree in theology). In Feb. ’62 we moved to Spartanburg, SC and I preached around, waiting for a call to a church. However, several wise pulpit committees decided not to call me.
You can well imagine my situation: We had a 5 year old boy, Elvera was working temporary as a secretary and I was a temporary GS-3 cartographic draftsman. It had been a year and a half and I was disparate. My prayer was something like this. “Lord, you know that this can’t go on. Something has to happen. Find a place for me, or get me into something else.” (More than that, but that’s the gist of it.)
Well, for some reason, I took the FSEE (Federal Service Entrance Exam), and with my civil engineering training and five points veteran preference, I aced the test. I was offered three jobs (One as an ‘’ammunition inspector” and positions as GS-5 cartographer in St. Louis, and Washington.) I took the one in Washington. And you know the rest of the story.
All of that is ancient history. But sometimes, when I am sitting on my porch thinking of how things were, I remember how desperate I was, and how immensely blessed I am. But part of it, I attribute to boldness in prayer.
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Thank you, Chas, we have had to be bold in our prayers as well and God is always good.
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Thanks, Chas. I remember doing that. It was in the process of the divorce and no support was coming. I ran out of money and a bill from my attorney came. I went into my bedroom and spread the letter out on the bed and got down on my knees. I prayed and wept over that bill and told God that I could not pay it and humbly asked him for help. It didn’t happen right away, but God paid the bill and I had the memory of His faithfulness.
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