Hi people.
So this is crazy. I still have a blog. But I never write any more. Don't know whether to delete it or start a new one, or what.

This morning I discovered God has an ironic sense of humor.
In praying for patience over breakfast, I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting. Needless to say it wasn't the unexpected powering on of the vacuuming cleaner, by my 3 year old, just as I was approaching a gripping part in my book. Nor the self same 3 year old bumping up against my arm, repeatedly - and with increasing volume - asking me for a hug, just as a well-loved character in the same book was meeting an emotional end!
Yet these are the ways the Lord "teaches you patience." Not by magically giving you a Patience Potion that makes you respond sweetly to all comers and interruptions. No. More like by dropping your pet peeves on you at the most inconvenient times, and offering you His patience to respond righteously.
This week my study of the book of James has me finding practical ways to apply verses 19-20 of chapter 1. "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God." This, being an area I have struggled with my whole life, is brought home now that I have little ones to whom I must be an example.
The next verse in James 1, verse 21, says "Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls."
I know this sounds like he's speaking to the utmost depraved souls. Murderers, adulterers, drunkards, and the like. But no, he is speaking to the moms like me, who just want a moment of quiet to read this paragraph! Easy enough to tell one to put away the thing that comes naturally (getting what one wants even at the cost of the bruising of our children's hearts) but he also gives us the way to do it. "Receive with meekness the implanted word..." Meekness in the ESV is replaced with Humility in the KJV. So to receive with meekness would mean to accept it as right, and as leading to salvation, knowing I (my wish at that moment for peace to finish my book or whatever) am not as important as to show the patient love of Christ to my son. Which is able not only to save my soul, but to save his as well.