Into every life a little rain must fall…

I just came across this "CONNECTIONS" article from July of '14 and thought it worth posting.  I still don't have the Honda running (time/time/time) but the lessons it has taught me continue to call me. The cloud behind me ended my Sabbatical ride.  The day before I had ridden 15 hours to reach my third church. 15 minutes after this picture was taken I was pushing my Honda just 20 more feet to wait 6 hours beneath an overpass hoping in vain it would dry out and start. Nope, Andrew Samp, a friend of his in Ames Iowa and Kristi bailed me out of this failed trip! God and I had a very unique worship service humming “Showers of Blessings” and listening to Mercy Me’s “Bring the Rain” on Pandora radio.  Honestly, I felt fortunate to have escaped more severe consequences from the blinding nature of the rain. This past spring has been one significant change of plans after another.  It’s been the same for many of you too!  Some of the changes have been good, but many of them have been unpleasant or even tragic. Diagnosis, economic challenges, personal crisis…  All of them demanding our adjustment, some of them growing pains, some of them changing our lives forever.  As was recently announced we will be changing our worship times in effort to make more desperately needed room in our 10:45am service. We certainly need your prayers and help with that one.  Growing is good! Changing our habits, not so easy.  We started the process of adding more parking this week.  We feel confident we can add 25 parking places, but we really need 50.  Unless more money is designated for such a project we’ll just add what we can afford. Remember our Bylaws surprise?  That has been a long drawn out process that is proving to be quite the challenge. Between changes in the Missouri Securities laws, national economic woes lowering our property value, and our bond brokerage company being sold it looks like it will be counter productive to refinance our bond program.  While no money has been wasted, and some healthy things have resulted, a lot of time and prayerful anticipation has resulted in, “Nope, not necessary, not happening.”  Many things for my Sabbatical changed against my wishes.  The key topic I wanted to read and pray about was “entitlement,” the attitude of thinking I am owed something.  Ha! God has certainly allowed a lot of rain to fall on some of our rides.  My best advice is to remain flexible, pray for each other and  “Watch for the rainbows!”