"The Next Step..........................."

Our Wednesday evening class, this week, looked at the last half of Romans, Chapter Twelve, examining such verses as if the apostle Paul were actually speaking to Christianity at large instead of merely singling out the Jews concerning their boasts of being “God’s chosen few”. It was quite refreshing for me to hear a group of Pentecostal believes talking in terms of their humanity, with no claims of having been somehow transformed into authoritative conquerors of death, hell, and the grave, righteous representatives of His holiness ordained to establish His kingdom on Earth. Well, maybe it isn’t always that bad; but much too often it sure sounds like it. Reality, for me, as Tony and I were discussing afterwards, is the Third Person of the Trinity who indwells me without ever over-powering me, the actual in fact substance of who God is in all that He is, but a divine Entity who mostly just tugs on the anchor-line and pricks my heart, my conscience, and a Presence who manifests Himself fully, here and there in my journey, more faithful in His commitment than I am in mine… This past week has been a mixture of me working in a Special-Ed unit whose format, since before Christmas, has been drastically altered, not so much in a bad way, but most certainly so as to have created much in the way of new challenges for each of us. Beth has been running errands for her oldest brother and his wife, the two of them with health problems and in need of family. The grandson who is a senior this year also either had his wallet stolen or he lost it somewhere Tuesday and that had her driving him to replace his license, cancelling credit cards, doing what was necessary to restore him to life as usual. I had the day off Thursday for another dental appointment. Last night was high-school basketball games in the church gymnasium, the students auctioning off cakes to help support their prom. Pastor and I got into a bit of a bidding war, him attempting to ensure his wife’s pastry was the most expensive, me winning with a final offer of seventy-five dollars for one baked by an elderly widow within our congregation, good-natured fun and he’ll no doubt having something to say about it from the pulpit Sunday morning. Such slice of the calendar, though, brought me no revelations from on high. Throughout the course of it, an old man was just deep in his thoughts, reading, writing, and chewing it all over as time passed around him. That doesn’t mean He wasn’t with me in it. Always, He is near……