"Detours, Stop Signs, and Patience......"

Sunday afternoon Beth and I returned to our local Sam's outlet and purchased a rather expensive laptop, abandoning my former stationary unit and stepping into Windows Eight. The latter didn't really give me any problems other than Microsoft no longer being a standard part of the package. The mouse being built into the keyboard, however, was driving me up the wall, mostly it seeming super sensitive to my big fat fingers. I would have ten or more email messages set up to delete and, before the trash-can trigger could be clicked, "poof!" the screen took me elsewhere. This morning it all went back in the box and with us over to the clerk, a young girl who was very pleasant concerning an old man's inability to cope with modern technology, the final transaction seeing me bring home a Dell system much like the previous HP product, this monitor as big as my television set. My friend will be coming by in a day or so to fine tune the operation; but it looks like senility hasn't completely captured me yet, the basics up and running enough for me to slowly re-enter the old routine. It feels good to settle back into familiarity. Some change may well be good, but it seldom comes easy to the elderly... Last night our midweek Bible study made our fourth session in dealing with Tozer's "Life in the Spirit". The classes are merely utilizing the author's chapter titles as a guide and not serving up his thoughts for consideration, each lesson a matter of where the teacher takes us with his own mixture of chapter and verse, quotes from several sources, not just this particular book. We are a motley crew, not just because of age differences, but separated as well by our denominational history. One fellow and his wife attend the Baptist church just a mile down the road, planted there for decades and not about to switch membership now. A few of us fall into my class, born-again into old-time holiness, legalism and the Holy Ghost sharing the same pew, our personal dogma sorted out over the last fifty years. Add fifteen or so others still raising their own children, Pentecost mostly a faith acquired not all that long ago, backgrounds varied, modern television evangelism, for the most part, the only teaching they have known thus far. Stir the pot and the discussions that come forth are certainly not "all in one mind and in one accord". What we do possess, however, is His presence. No fist-fights. No demands for "my way or the highway". Passionate? Oh, yes; but there is a discernible division between what comes out of a man's head and what comes out of his belly. If we do not always see all things alike, it yet remains that we are agreed in the other fellow's perspective being worthy of our attention. We leave as friends and with food to digest. This is and always will be - a journey. The place we occupy at present may well be cozy and comfortable, but none of us have truth locked up in a personal doctrine. Faith is an item under construction. No need to get excited. Just follow the Carpenter......