I guess I was wrong when I said you would get a normal bulletin this week. I have been enjoying the meeting we've been having with the "Lord, I Believe" gang and have not had time to put a good one together. I did make a couple casual observations, however, that I thought were a little edifying so I am going to drop those on you instead of a full blown article. (Besides, you don't need this to distract you, pay attention to your class teacher instead! )

Today at lunch I heard one of the mothers say she was praying for everything except patience. (By the way, this is the nice lady who is married to a David, do you know who it is? And no, it's not Kathy!) I didn't ask her what she meant by that, but I have a fairly good guess. When your life is driving you crazy, you don't need to pray for patience - God is giving you a great opportunity to learn it right there. I mean after all, when we pray for patience how does God give it to us, anyway? Just "zap" us with it? Or does he arrange things such that we experience what we need to grow? Yes, I know about Solomon, and I know the bible says if you ask for it, God will give it to you. I don't doubt either of those. But consider this. We occasionally pray for God to strengthen the church. What is the one thing that *really* makes us stronger, purer, etc? A little persecution does the trick. So are we asking God to persecute us? Not directly, but sometimes you should be ready to truly receive whatever it is you ask for. . .

Did you all notice that Kieran lived a lifetime last Saturday? Sure seemed like he did to me. Think about what happened to him. He got up, studied a bit, prepared himself for the debate, met the challenge head on, did his best, and then walked away having done (in my opinion) a great job. My wife and I both had a different take on this. I prayed the whole debate that Kieran would be calm, confident, and he'd say the right things to convince the gainsayer. Deniese simply prayed the spirit would put the words right in his mouth. Either way, so how was it like living a whole life? Well, we are born. We prepare ourselves, hopefully, for whatever challenges that come in life. We collide into those things and either fold up or persevere (Kieran didn't fold up!). When it's all over, we look back and hopefully can say to ourselves that we did the best we could, we finished the course, we kept the faith. I was very proud of Kieran as my friend and brother, because .he sought out an opportunity for good and made the most of it. If that isn't how a Christian *should* live their life then I guess I don't know what is...

Finally, something you may be able to relate to from my own experience. Often times I wake up and am unable to sleep. Instead of getting out of bed and watching TV or something else, I start to pray. Sometimes I pray for a long, long time before I fall asleep. I try to pray for all of you, and usually I start with "the church" and then the elders and then move on to individual members. Somewhere in there I fall asleep. Now, my thought was this. Does the prayer count? r mean, I didn't say "In the name of Jesus, amen" at the end. Hmmm... I like to do things "by the book" as it were, and this worried me a bit. A few of us were discussing this after services one day, because I brought it up looking for advice. I liked what the others said. One other person mentioned that they often pray as they commute to and from work. Excellent habit! Mr. Mo had the best answer to my dilemma, however, thus I pass his advice on to you. When you *start* to pray, he suggested, say "In the name of Jesus I make this prayer" and go from there. Of course! Besides, God knows my heart and he knows when I am speaking to Him. I'd still rather not miss tagging any of the bases, though...

Randy