I Wonder..and am afraid it’s true of me

A quote from Erika Haub’s site: 

It’s seven p.m. The living room is cozy. What is USAmerican discipleship like, particularly in suburbia?… We sip our coffee, eat our snacks, and read our “lessons” and fill in the blanks of our cool workbooks, wondering if this will be over before “24″ starts. Oh, there’s the urgency. There is more danger and urgency in a one hour TV show than there is in a whole year of Americanized, suburbanized discipleship.

Things Occurring to Me

1. The doctor says I need to drink roughly a gallon of water a day. This seems impossible to me.

2. Commercials I am liking: the Jimmie Dean breakfast sandwich commercials; the State Street Gobal Advisors’ commercial with the people getting off the moving elevator.

3. Commercials I hate: the Vermont Teddy Bear commercial with the giddy, girly women.

4. I don’t like church names that offer products – new life; new hope; new whatever. There’s too much that happens in church to contradict the name, and then the name becomes an accusation. It’s like naming my family the hope family, or new family, or best family, or joy family, or…you get the picture. We are the Bryant’s – take it from there: hope, pain, joy, disappointment, rest, struggle…it all gets included.

5. After all these years, CS Lewis still thrills me and JI Packer still speaks sense.

6. I talk about me, too much. I wonder if me and Anna Nicole Smith have too much in common – except you know what.

7. I love talking to pastors when they open up and get honest – I hate talking to pastors when they don’t, and when they don’t, they are the last people in the world I want to talk to.

8. I am thankful for Carolina Jim and Chicago Jim who are my sponsors. I hate when I avoid them. I love it when they give me space but still are fishing for my presence.

9. I wish I had gone to the National Pastors Conference in San Diego. Maybe it is just that I wish I had gone to San Diego.

10. Our dog doesn’t hear so well anymore. I don’t hear so well anymore. Bummer for Sharon.

11. I think coffee and donuts should be included in discipleship manuals. I don’t know how, but I think they play some kind of role in spiritual maturity.

12. I hate it when someone sends to me an email that is so laugh out loud but can’t be sent to my blog friends because it will be misunderstood. I am too far over the edge already on this blog. Hey, Coastal Leadership Team – are you really reading this stuff? Do I still have a job?

13. I love it when Sharon kicks into overdrive when one of our boys hits a “help needed” spot. She has a computer somewhere in her that brings up the automatic checklist. It’s like her whole system shuts down, and she does one thing – go over that checklist. I can’t figure out how she generates that list. I just sort of wander around.

14. I am putting one more item here because I hate to end on 13. No, I am not superstitious. I just don’t believe in taking chances. Don’t judge me because I look at hymnbooks to see what #13 is. (Can’t do that at Coastal – no hymnbooks).

Don Bryant’s Means of Transportation

Somedays I fell like this is too true!!!!

Today’s Quote 2/11/07

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.  Ralph Emerson