sermon preparation

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My Complaint Was Unjustified

I was a little too hasty with my complaint.

Spring is here and I should be writing about mountain biking, hockey playoffs or maybe baseball. 

… Or how about those Raptors and Kawhi Leonard’s four bouncer, rim shot, buzzer beater to send Toronto to the NBA Eastern Conference Finals?

But I can’t write about those things. I’m still trying to get my head around my latest bill from Bell Canada.

At the beginning of April I got a shock when our TV/Internet bill increased by $79 from the previous month. (I wrote about it here.)

I got a double shocker this month when my latest bill appeared to be devoid of any adjustments.

After the big increase a month ago, I had called Bell and complained. … I’ll make this short by saying they gave me a $40 reduction on my bill plus faster internet service. To get that, I was on the phone for way longer than an hour with more than one customer service rep.

Within a day or two I noticed some results. They kept their promise of adding three free stations and removing one station, but the internet service didn’t seem any faster. 

Then this month’s bill showed the free stations, but no mention of the upgraded internet, and the same price for TV and Internet as the month before. 

Back to the phones I went! … If nothing else the phone company is ensuring we are still using their services because we have to call them all the time to complain! 

This time the conversation was more disturbing and discouraging than the previous month. 

I talked to two customer service reps who didn’t want to budge. They basically dismissed what I had been told a month earlier. They said that the notes for that complaint didn’t say anything about the credits and changes we had agreed upon. 

In the end, the rep said that she would have her manager call me.  

So I have to wait for the manager’s call … which also means there may be a follow up to this post some time in the future.

Then this morning, as I reviewed my bill again, I noticed something I had missed before. All the itemized charges are the same as the previous month, but there is an amount in an adjustments box with no explanation.

That adjustment is a credit. It only shows up on the remittance page, but it brings my bill to what was promised me the month before.

So I didn’t get faster internet and there doesn’t seem to be any record of or reason given for the credit, but I got one. 

The question I still have is, “Will this credit show up every month?” There is no record of what it is for, so it would be easy to just drop it.

As it stands now, when the manager calls, the only thing I can say to him is … in the words of Saturday Night Live’s Emily Litella, “Never Mind”.

Here’s the thing: I’m distrustful about what my tech company has given me. They might take it away as fast as I received it; it only shows up as a mystery item on my bill. How many times do we treat God that way when He gives us something? We treat Him as though He might take it away at any moment, or we are suspicious of whether it was God who gave it to us in the first place. You might not be able to trust your tech company, but you can trust God. Give Him the credit and praise He deserves.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What has God provided for you that you didn’t really thank Him for? Leave your comment below.

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My Injuries Keep Coming

I’m finding it more difficult to diagnose minor injuries than I used to. 

Years ago, when I had an ache or a pain, I could pinpoint the precise cause or incident of my injury. Now, when I find myself with a bit of discomfort, I’m not necessarily sure what happened to bring it on.

This is all new for me. For my wife, Lily, on the other hand, this is a phenomenon that has plagued her most of her life!

Throughout our marriage when Lily would say, “I’m sore”, and I would ask her what happened or what she had done, she would always say, “I don’t know. I’m just sore.” If she got a bruise, about 90 percent of the time she didn’t know how she got it. 

I’m kind of catching up to her in this regard, because lately I’ve had some sore spots on my body that are a little mysterious.

I wrote about my sore elbow back in the fall (read about it here), and although it is now slowly getting better, it’s been six months of pain. … I still have to be careful to warm up before I start taking shots on a goalie. 

It turned out to be a ligament problem and I’m still not completely sure how I got it … although possibly it was from excessive wrist shots in hockey.

The latest thing that has been bugging me is a sore thumb around the joint on my left hand. It’s been sore for a few weeks now. 

And I don’t have a clue how it happened!  

I wondered if I was getting a touch of arthritis when the knuckle at the base of my index finger of my right hand got swollen and very painful.

I didn’t have any explanation for my knuckle either, and it has been swollen now for close to two weeks. … It doesn’t help that I sometimes move it the wrong way or that people shake my hand with a little pressure. 

One of the guys I play hockey with said it was gout, but that was because he had just finished experiencing some gout in his foot. I knew his diagnosis was only based on his experience and had nothing to do with really being able to identify my problem.

But yesterday at church, I may have figured something out. 

I asked my doctor if I possibly have a bit of arthritis, but when I described what I was experiencing, he didn’t agree. So I responded that maybe I did just injury it. He kind of nodded.

A few minutes later I was talking with a group of other people and the topic of injuries came up.  While I was relaying to them my conversation with my doctor an idea came to my mind. 

I had grabbed a puck out of the air with my hand a week or so ago. Maybe – just maybe – my sore knuckle was a result of catching that puck with my hand. 

My conclusion: injuries come more easily as we age, but also our memory is not as sharp in identifying incidents with injuries. 

Here’s the thing: The only way to prevent sin from going unnoticed in your life is to stay diligent in identifying and addressing it each time. When you let sin slide, your memory starts to fade, and you then don’t easily identify the ramifications to that sin. Stay on top of your sin by identifying it right away and dealing with it. It will lessen the chance of a lingering sore spot.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What mystery in your life do you need to identify? Leave your comments below

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The Case Of The Disappearing App

We all know what disappearing ink is like, but I have an app on my phone that sort of behaved the same way.

When I was a kid it was fun to try to make a secret message that no one could read, except the person you wanted to get the message because they had the formula to see what was written on the paper.  

Disappearing ink is made with lemon juice and to read it you need to get the paper close to a heat source. Then what was written in invisible ink can be seen.

There are also other ways to get ink to disappear. For instance, over time, in certain light ink starts to fade. 

On the wall of my office hangs my ordination certificate, signed by the six men who interviewed me and agreed that I should be ordained. That was almost thirty years ago and the signatures on that certificate are quite faded. In fact, they will likely disappear completely in the next few years. 

The proof that I’m a Reverend will be gone. I may have to retire. 

Ink doesn’t last forever. I shouldn’t expect more of it. 

But the other day, six pages of notes suddenly disappeared on me – notes that I’d made in writing my sermon. 

I probably have a peculiar way of studying, but I stand and make notes on a white board. When the white board is full, I use an app on my phone to scan the contents of the white board and turn them into a PDF. 

Then I erase  the whiteboard and start writing more notes. 

By the time I’ve finished making my notes, which I do over three days, they are all saved into my app as a PDF. I then refer to that PDF on my tablet as I write my sermon. 

Well, this week I opened the app to view my scanned notes, and the app opened as if it had never been used before. There was a splash screen and then some “let’s get started” slides. I thought that was strange, but I also figured that perhaps the app had updated during the night. 

But when I went to find my scanned whiteboard images, there was nothing. 

Nada. None. Nowhere to be found. They just all disappeared. … and I had no intention of making them secret notes! 

I searched the app for a way to get them back. Nothing. 

I started an online chat with a representative from the app, but couldn’t help but notice how much time was ticking by. 

I should have been well into writing my sermon, but I hadn’t started. Instead, I spent two hours trying to recover my disappearing scans. 

In the end, the person I was chatting with had to pass my problem off to more technical employees who would get back to me sometime after they investigated my problem.

I couldn’t wait for that to happen, so my notes were lost to me in writing my sermon. 

… I still haven’t heard back from the company. I’ve finished writing my sermon, so I don’t really need them, but there is still no sight of my disappearing notes!

Here’s the thing: Guilt can be disappearing on us. You might think that’s a good thing – it is and it isn’t. Guilt serves a purpose to draw us back to God in repentance – that’s good. But if we don’t act on that guilt, it begins to fade and will completely disappear, leaving us in our sin and drifting away from God – that’s not good. Don’t let guilt disappear. Act on it and draw close to God. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you let disappear that you want to get back? Leave your comments below.

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Is It Possible To Be Too Involved in Something?

I got myself way too involved and didn’t realize it until I was deep into it.

The other day we changed our phone and internet service at work. 

We had been with the same internet company for 23 years but they couldn’t offer us any faster service than we were getting even though it was no longer adequate.

I still wouldn’t have made the change but the price point was almost the same for 10 times faster internet.

Even then I was still sceptical that the new company could give us increased service, knowing that the phone wires in our building were ancient.

I was assured by the salesman that it would be a very simple change over … no trouble; it would be seamless; I wouldn’t notice a thing.

Salesmen are all about the sale. They will tell you what you want to hear. I, on the other hand, knew our building and didn’t think for a moment that it would be seamless. 

But I was curious.

When the installer came, he realized about five minutes after he arrived that this was not going to be a simple change over. 

In fact, just getting a new cable to our building took all morning. Then there was all the inside work.

The installer had help in the morning, but in the afternoon he was on his own. 

He asked me if I wanted to see where things were going to go down in the basement and I said, “Sure.”

Costly reply.

In the process of showing me where things were going, he also got me to hold something … then pass him something else and help him follow a wire.

I then located a hole in the ceiling where he could feed a cable up through to the main floor of the building – a significant deal because we have reinforced concrete floors and he would have otherwise had to drill through it to get the wire up.

But by this time, my sermon writing had been abandoned and I was helping him trouble shoot some of the other things that needed to be negotiated.

It was like offering to help someone move who tells you he just has a small apartment and that one truckload will do it. But when you show up, nothing is packed in boxes and there is no truck. You are left lugging carloads of items piled throughout you car and trunk. 

… And the one trip it was going to take ends up being four or five trips back and forth. 

We’ve all been there.  

This time I got roped in by just wanting to see where the installer was going to put things … and, from that point on, he had a lackey he could count on. 

The seamless change, that I would barely even notice, cost me my sermon writing time, and an afternoon of being an assistant. 

The work that had been scheduled for 8:00 am – 12:00 pm, ended up being from 8:00 am – 4:30 pm, with me deeply involved in it. 

But you know what? The new internet speed is amazing!

Here’s the thing: Like anything in life, your relationship with Christ will take you deeper than you realized or thought it would at the start. Are you able to say “yes” to going deeper with Christ than you thought you would or could? Christ will always call you to deeper levels of relationship. Don’t ever settle or try to minimize the work you will be called to do. It will all be worth it.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What in your life has taken you deeper than you thought it would? Leave your comments below.

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I’m Not A Procrastinator

Some people are procrastinators. They work opposite to Nike’s motto of “Just do it” … But why?

Why do some people delay what they know they have to do? 

I should know the answer to that question because I am one of those people. I don’t procrastinate with everything, and I try to do it less and less, but I am a procrastinator.  

I prefer to call it “delayed action”. I know I have to do something; I just delay in doing it. 

For instance, yesterday I posted seven weeks of material to a website that I maintain. 

It took a while because there was minor editing to be done for each of the seven posts. I also had to gather three documents, and write a summary for each of the posts. 

I know why I delayed my action: I didn’t want to spend the time. It took a lot of time to edit and upload those seven posts. 

The reason I got behind, though, and the reason I procrastinated was that I had a problem with the first post that I wasn’t sure I could solve. As a result, each week I put my work off because that first post was still not ready. 

After seven weeks, I finally tried to solve the problem and it turned out not to be much of a problem at all. It was more in my head than anything else. 

And that is why some people procrastinate. They think the task is too big and so they don’t start, or they get into the task and come up against a seemingly big obstacle and so they stop. 

I have to write out thirty Christmas cards with different greetings in them. It’s something that I’m not looking forward to. 

I want to delay my action on the task because it seems like it will take too long. It will cut into the other things I want to do today.

The truth is, when I actually sit down and write out those cards, that task will cut into anything I want to do.

But again, at the source of the delay is a problem I don’t want to solve. The problem is figuring out what I will write in all those cards. 

People who procrastinate somehow see a problem that is insurmountable. They also don’t take much time to think about the problem. 

If they took the time to investigate the problem, they would often find that the problem is not that big of a deal. There is a simple or easy solution to most problems. 

But, for the procrastinator, any problem or potential problem seems like a major road block … and so the work halts.

Often the work has to get done, so it doesn’t halt indefinitely. At some point – like with my posts to the web – one has to buckle down and get at it. 

That’s when the procrastinator declares, “I work better under pressure.” 

Not true. … The person who delays action just has a phobia towards problems. 

Here’s the thing: There is a problem we all have and that is sin. Sin is anything that misses God’s desired will for you. Do we deal with it or do we ignore it? That problem leaves us all at the doorstep of delayed action. The thing is sin doesn’t go away and it will have to be dealt with. In fact, Christ dealt with it already on the cross. Your job then is to confess and repent of it. And my advice is don’t procrastinate. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you tend to delay action on? Leave your comments below.

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When Your Batteries Need Recharging

I don’t think we could live without batteries, so why are they still so frustrating?

Batteries should last longer than they do. With all the advancements we have made, surely we could improve their longevity. 

… Mind you, parents might wish batteries had shorter charges so the annoying toys they bought their children for their birthdays would stop working. 

Well, too bad for those parents; their kids will grow out of them eventually. 

Some things have changed for the better. 

I remember I used to lose all my work if my computer battery died when I was working on a document and I had forgotten to save it.

Computers are better now. They have residual life that continues to provide a minimal amount of power to the computer even though the computer shuts down. They also save as they go to compensate for finicky batteries and user forgetfulness.

At least you no longer have to worry about losing everything you’ve typed since your last save. 

But still some batteries don’t work that way. I lost my bike computer when it was running. When I later found it, the battery was completely drained. I lost all the data from that bike ride. 

Now, even though the battery is charged, it won’t record certain bits of data. It will show me my speed, but won’t track my distance or average speed … and it won’t save any data.  

What’s with that?

If the battery on my drone dies, or gets turned off before I stop recording video, I lose all the video I shot. 

Come on! Why can’t we have some continuous save or residual power even when it’s turned off to protect the camera data?

And don’t get me started about battery memory! I’m paranoid about using my batteries until they’re almost dead before I recharge them. 

You should be able to recharge all batteries at any point without the fear of losing battery life if the battery has not been almost completely depleted before being recharged.

With many batteries, if you charge them when they have twenty-five percent life left, the battery will only give you seventy-five percent of battery life after that. 

Some say most batteries don’t have memories, but those people work for the battery companies. … It’s a conspiracy to keep us dependent on the pink bunny.

But hold the phone! With some batteries, you shouldn’t run them down under four percent because then they won’t recharge any more. … I now have a few fairly new batteries that are only good for putting in kids’ toys that you don’t really want to work.  

I know we can’t expect the same kind of experience as plugging into a power source, but in this day and age we should be able to have better standards and longer life.

Here’s the thing: Many of us live our lives to the fullest. We drain our batteries every day and often don’t recharge long enough to get to our full capacity. We think we can keep on going, and that the need for rest is slowing us down. But when God finished creating the world, He rested and declared that day holy – a Sabbath. We would do well to use the Sabbath for what it was made for – to recharge our batteries and honour God. We have made many advancements in our lives, but we still need rest, both physically and for our souls. Find your rest in Christ. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How do you take a Sabbath each week? Leave your comments below.

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What Dreams Are Made Of

I think I know what dreams are made of. 

There are many people who try to tell us what dreams are made of, but they just want to sell us something. There are countless companies who have exploited dreams to get people to spend money. 

Vacation destinations and travel agents are masters at promoting pictures and videos of beaches and sunsets, food and accommodations that draw you into the dream of being right there. 

And many people find their dream there. 

Then there’s the jewelry industry. They probably exploit the idea of a dream more than any other industry. 

They sell the dream of a relationship.

They show their products being given and worn, and do it in such a magical way. Then men try to recreate the dream as they reveal a diamond ring or a necklace to the one they love, or hope to marry. Women see the whole dream, beginning to end, as they first gaze at that piece of glassy stone. 

A lot of money has been made on dreams. 

But there are other dreams that don’t get us to spend money. They just scare us, or frustrate us or give us a warm feeling. Those are the dreams we have just before we wake up. 

Some say that they are made up of what we experienced the night before. If we saw a scary movie, we might dream about something that is frightening. If we’re in the middle of something that’s not finished, our dream may be about something frustrating, like not being able to catch someone. 

I don’t know about you, but I very rarely remember my dreams. By the time I wake up, I’ve forgotten what it was that was going through my mind. I’m only left with the feeling of frustration. 

My wife, Lily, however, often has dreams and they really bother her when she wakes up. She doesn’t like to talk about them because when she does that, it just sets them more in her mind. 

She usually blames me for watching something on TV the night before that put the stimulus in her head that freaked her out in the morning. But I’ve proved that to be wrong. 

The last time she had a scary dream, she had watched some romantic movie the night before that she had wanted to see. I took absolutely no responsibility for the movie choice or the dream that followed in the morning. 

But I know what dreams are really made of: dreams are a combination of thought and emotion. 

When you combine a thought with a strong emotion, you get a dream. That dream could be the kind that wakes you up, or the kind you have when you are awake that drives you to spend money, or give your life to.  

A dream starts with a thought, and as you ponder that thought, feelings become attached to it and become a passion. 

The result is a dream that will not leave you, but move you to pursue it. 

Here’s the thing: God places thoughts in our minds. The tiniest thoughts may be easy to dismiss, for fear that if we ponder them, they may stay with us. But if you will give that thought some time to get attached to emotion, it will develop into something you may want to pursue. It is true for those God is drawing into His family and for those God wants to serve Him in some capacity. So don’t dismiss that thought; ponder it. It may be that God is giving you a dream of the future. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What thought do you need to ponder a little more? Leave your comments below.

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Can You Really Love Enough?

According to Hughie Lewis, “Love is a Curious Thing” – that was the title of one of his songs from the 80’s.  

But love is also complicated. 

Last week when I was writing my sermon, I was struck by an aspect of love in a fresh way: When you love someone, that love must grow or it will die. 

In other words, if you don’t continue loving more, you will end up loving less and less. 

Love decays if left unattended.

That is true with everything in this world. 

You leave metal out … it rusts. You leave grass alone … it gets full of weeds. You leave food out … it goes bad. You leave a pond without any water flow or some kind of filter … it gets stagnant. 

Pretty much everything decays, rots, or spoils if you don’t treat it, take care of it, or help it along in some way. 

There is plastic, however … it seems to last and last and never go away. Landfills are full of it; the oceans have flotillas of it. But even with plastic, scientists are finding that if you leave a plastic bottle of water in a warm environment long enough, it will produce cancer-causing molecules in the water. 

Nothing stays the same. 

Mountains erode; natural disasters get more disastrous. Why would we ever think that love can just stay the same, that it doesn’t change? 

There is an old joke about a couple who went to see a marriage counsellor. The wife complained that her husband never told her that he loved her. The man replied, “I told her I loved her on our wedding day and, if anything changes, I will let her know.” 

Unfortunately, that’s not true. Your love can’t stay the same; it will either increase or it will decrease.

When a couple gets married, they can look in each other’s eyes and say, “I love you with all my heart” and it’s true. 

But after a few years, that couple has shared many experiences – some really good ones and some not so good. 

If knowing each other more through those experiences doesn’t cause each one to increase their love for the other, it will produce a decrease. 

The more you know, the more you have to love or you will love less because you now know more. 

Perhaps we have so many marriages that end in divorce because people are still loving their spouses with the same amount of love they did when they got married – only that’s not enough love to hold a couple together after a few years. They need to love more.

For love to increase in the wake of experience, you have to embrace the good and you have to deal with the bad. 

You must determine to expand your love, nurture it, care for it, and constantly attend to it. 

You can’t love enough. There is always more.

Here’s the thing: If you recognize that God loves you, and sent Jesus to save you from hell, and your reaction to that is to love God in return, that is truly a great thing. But unless you love God more than the day you gave your heart to Him, you will love Him less. As you get to know Him more and experience more with Him, you have to love Him more, or you will love Him less. It’s that simple; love doesn’t stay the same. You can’t love enough. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How are you going to love God more? Leave your comments below.

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I Just Couldn’t Find it

This article was originally posted in 2012. 

Have you ever looked for something that you were certain of its location, but still couldn’t find it?  Don’t those times drive you insane?  

I find myself living out the definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.”  We probably all do that at times.

You either dig around in a drawer or a room, searching the same spots over and over,  hoping to find what you are looking for.  

You start talking to yourself, your blood pressure rises, you get angry with yourself, and then at the thing you’re looking for, until you don’t even want it anymore.  In fact, you hate it now, but you just HAVE to find it!

We’ve all been there; it’s not a pretty sight.  Your family starts out sympathetic, even helpful, but as you start to get frustrated, they start to vacate the area.  

As you start to sound like Gollum (from the Lord of the Rings), your family members look for things to do, errands to run, other places to be.

The other day, while preparing my sermon, I had three illustrations I wanted to use: one was a personal story, and the two others came from books.  I could remember some of the details for one of the illustrations, and even remember the book I had read it in.  

I had seen the title of the book the day before on one of my shelves, so I went directly there.  With the book in hand, I sat down at my desk and started looking for the story.

I looked at the beginning of each chapter because often times they started with a story.  That didn’t help.  I looked at the chapter titles to see if any of them would ring a bell.  

I was sure the story was in this book, but I wasn’t having any luck finding it. 

I was getting a little frustrated and I lost my confidence that I was even searching the correct book.  I got another book out by the same author and started looking through it, even though I didn’t think it was in there.  

Then I turned to the internet.  I googled the gist of the story with the author’s name.  I had to change my search three times before I got some results that seemed promising.  I looked at several hits but none of them were helpful.  

Then I discovered a document someone posted referencing the story.  Finally some hope.

The bad news was the document didn’t have the story details.  The good news was it confirmed that the story was, in fact, in the original book I had been looking in.  So I set to work to find the story.  I started at the back of the book this time.  I looked on pretty well every page for mention of it.  I finally found it . . . in the INTRODUCTION! 

Here’s the thing:  Sometimes I get all caught up in what I’m doing.  I know what to do, and it’s usually something small, within my power.  What I don’t do is ask God for help right away.  I fuss and stew instead of turning to the One who can guide me right to what I need.  Don’t wait until you’ve exhausted every avenue before you seek God, turn to him first. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question:  What have you learned from frustrating times like I described?  Leave your comment below.

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Three Things In Two Hours

You have two hours and three things you want to get done … how do you decide which things you are going to do?

That was my dilemma the other day. 

I was at our cottage and planned to pack up after lunch to drive home. But there were three things I wanted to do before lunch and I only had a couple of hours: I wanted to go for a 30-minute bike ride, write a blog post and fix the leaky taps in the bathtub. 

I really wanted to do all three. In the back of my mind I thought I could only do one, but I rejected that thought, focussing on what I could do first. 

Though I would only ride my bike for about 30 minutes, getting ready, cooling down afterwards and taking a shower would bump that activity up to an hour minimum. 

Writing a blog post might take 40 minutes minimum, but it could take up to an hour. Since I hadn’t thought of a subject to write about, it was likely going to take an hour. 

Then there were the leaky taps. 

This was a late entry onto my list. The taps had been dripping for a while, but for some reason it seemed like they were dripping a little more now.

I knew this project could spill over any time limit I put on it. 

What would you do?

In the back of my mind, I still (being delusional) hoped I could get all these things done by noon. 

While I was staring at my blank tablet screen, I thought, “Why waste time sitting here trying to think of something to write about?” So I got up and looked at the taps … I thought a bike ride and shower should be last on the list. 

You can probably figure out how those two hours were spent. 

When was the last time you attempted a home repair that fit into a nice, neat little time frame? When have you tried to fix a plumbing problem where everything went smoothly, without a hitch? 

I went to the hardware store to just replace the valves for the hot and cold water taps. But they don’t make a standard tap valve. There were many styles and it looked like they were out of some. The one the hardware employee and I settled on didn’t look like an exact match but I took a chance. 

When I got back to the cottage, I quickly discovered it was not the right one. So back I went to the hardware store for trip two. 

In the end, I decided to just change the washers … which would have been quick and easy except that the screws were stuck. 

I had to soak the taps in CLR to get the calcium off them. 

Guess what I did while I waited for the CLR to do its work? I ate lunch.

I blew right through my two hour window, and didn’t even get the taps fixed. … I didn’t even get one thing done in my time frame – brutal!

On a side note, after lunch when I swapped out the washers, the taps stopped leaking.

Here’s the thing: With all the things we want to do and could do, some things will get crowded out. We just won’t have time for them all. How often are we guilty of not having time for God, simply because of our wants and priorities? Put God in the first spot every day. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Lately, how have you crowded God out of your day? Leave your comments below.