Housekeeping

  So I've been thinking about posting schedule and all that jazz.  Go figure I didn't really have a set idea in my head.  I just started a blog, and expected my meager audience to check it regularly to get nuggets of wisdom.  Sheesh, talk about self-centered!  I did you all a great disservice yesterday by not having a plan.  A whole day in and I'm already asking y'all for forgiveness.  Well, I guess we're on a roll for my second post ever!

  Anyway, here's what I was thinking:  I'll post big updates every Thursday (i.e. updates that have what I've been studying).  I'll try to post this sometime before 10 am Central time.  My plan for Friday through Wednesday is to post daily as I encounter chances to forgive or goofy anecdotes from my daily struggle.  I'll do my best to post daily, but please give me grace if I miss one or two.  I'll probably miss on weekends because, well, I get lazy on Saturday and that may not be right but it's honest.  If you have better ideas for posting schedules, please leave me some comments with your thoughts.

Well, here goes the second official post:
  
  "Who puts a crapton of packing peanuts in a trash bag, and then leaves it in a gym for a week?"  That was my thought yesterday as I was doing some impromptu cleaning in the church's gym.  The senior pastor had come in (he is on vacation this week) to drop some party stuff off for something his family is doing this Saturday.  He noticed some trash bags and assorted junk in the corner of the gym that I had noticed last week (I figured our cleaning team would pick it up).  He then called the office and asked that we take care of it.

  I hate cleaning anyway.  I could be a jerk and keep reminding myself and everyone around me that this isn't in my job description.  Even as I type that sentence I keep thinking, "Oh really?  You're job description of life isn't to be a servant?!" Anyway, I started to pick it up only to realize that one bag was full of styrofoam packing peanuts, and that just happened to be the bag that broke open.

  Have you ever tried to sweep up stryofoam from a plastic gym floor?  It's doesn't clean well.  Seriously, those peanuts must have viewed the floor as if it was their favorite binky or something.  With every dustpan full of peanuts I could feel the anger rising.  "Why am I the one doing this?  Who left this mess?  Seriously, I need to figure out who did this so I can make sure they know not to do it again.  This is the reason the world's falling apart: People leave packing peanuts in a trash bag that hasn't been securely closed and then some unsuspecting schmo has to clean it up.  It's like peanut-geddon."

  Then it hit me: That's a very unforgiving attitude.  You're getting upset over something ridiculous.  There could be any number of reasons that people left these here, and none of them are as specific as, "Let's stick it to Neil."  If you're this unforgiving in something that someone probably did unintentionally, and is as little as having to pick up statically velcroed pieces of styrofoam, how on Earth are you going to be able to forgive huge injustices.  You can't be trusted with big things until you are shown faithful in the small.

  So as I finished up cleaning my little polystyrene friends, God brought me to the realization that if this blog is to be a success I'm going to have to let go of a few things.  Mainly my own selfish need to have justice done, and for me to be the vessel of justice.  Don't get me wrong, we can be the catalyst for God's justice, but a lot of the time it's our brand of justice we seek to dish out rather than that which would be in God's time and desire.  In other words, we're selfish, and we seek to fulfill our own want rather than what is needed.  I don't want to be that.  I want to be the opposite of that.  I don't want forgiveness defeated by static cling.