Master 228: Thanks for a new laptop?

Have you ever had an omelette with shrimp and avocado? You would if you ate breakfast at my parents' home, which I did last Sunday. I do so love food. I'm not a picky eater, thank goodness. (As a child I used to dislike my Dad's beef and cabbage stew, and for a long time I wouldn't eat octopus or squid, but I've since gotten over all that.) So I can enjoy just about any dish or meal. Oddly enough, when I prepare meals for myself, they are always very simple and plain. Maybe that's why I enjoy other people's food so much more. And food and friends together is better still.

I attended church with my parents and went to lunch with them and one of the church leaders. I spent that afternoon with friends back in Riverside. I chatted with another friend out of state. And over the course of the evening graded a lot of logic homework.

One of my friends, who enjoys cooking and does a wonderful job at it too, recently began to experiment with 'pickling'. She gave me a jar of her pickles for Christmas and they were absolutely delicious. I finished the jar on Monday. Did I mention that I love food? But the highlight of my Monday was joining with a couple of my friends to play basketball in Highgrove. Five-on-five full court. It's been a long while since I did that. And I was definitely the worst one out there, but that was okay. (It must have been okay, because my teammates kept passing the ball to me.) It was a good time.

Kenyan tea is wonderful. So are beautiful evening skies. And exercise and working out can actually be fun and enjoyable. Hot showers are an incredible blessing too.

Much of my week was spent in preparation for a meeting with some of my church's leaders. I was to lead a discussion on Friday as we continue in a book study on church development. As I was reading through the material and preparing, I was struck by the thought that I don't want to be talking to a bunch of leaders about their role in the church. Instead, I want to be talking to a bunch of individual people about their lives and callings. There's a difference. People are more than the roles that they occupy and the positions they fill. And leadership is most effective, I expect, when it flows naturally from the identity and character of the person who is leading. So I want to be careful not to lose sight of the people who are standing in those important leadership roles. I'm not unfamiliar with the pressure and weight of expectations that can come with being in a leadership position. But that's not how it should be. And reflecting on that, I think, was a good way to prepare for my meeting.

The big news of the week (if I may speak facetiously) is that I bought a new laptop. It's a new last-generation MacBook. I bought it on Thursday and have been wrestling with it, on and off, through the better part of Friday and Saturday in order to transfer and back-up all the material that was on my old computer. "Time Machine" is a great concept, but it is so frustrating when a file transfer slows to a crawl and I have absolutely no idea why. The funny thing about such frustrations is that they can make us forget the good things--like the fact that I now own a new laptop. How easily new blessings can become new sources of frustration, and we sometimes have to work to remember that they really are blessings.

A friend of mine reminded me of that while we were eating lunch on Friday. Friends are good for that. So it is good to be able to talk and call and text and share. Sitting in the living room with a couple friends after the meeting's ended and just chatting about music and cars and work and crazy people --that is so good.

Lord, help me not to forget. --And all this only scratches the surface. --Help me not to forget how blessed I am.

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God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.