"Survival.................."

This is my last full week of Summer Break, school not starting until the fourteenth of August, but a lot of one to three hour classes are scheduled between here and there that will eliminate any sense of having nothing on my plate for any extended portion of time. I return with mixed emotions, working with these kids yet part of my heart, dealing with the job, itself, as it has changed in the last decade or so another matter. Then, again, the same could be said in so far as my relationship with the church. It might well be that age has something to do with it, more than just my body revealing the change that comes to all of us. My spirit stays refreshed in Him; my heart knows the fullness of Christ “in” me; and my mind is continually exploring the depths of that relationship. My soul, however, seems tired, the world around me changed in so many ways, life still precious, but the journey involving too much red tape, something humanity calls “progress”. People no longer talk to people. Everything is hooked up to a computer, “Press one if you want this, two if you need that”, the list so long that by the time it has run its course, you’ve already forgotten why you were calling in the first place. Insurance that, by the time they’ve finished explaining what they will or will not cover, you wonder who it was that you bought the policy to protect. Government has taken this country to the verge of self-destruction, those principles upon which it was founded now being questioned and, to some extent, ignored. I realize, of course, that humanity has always been humanity and “I are one”. I know that such condition explains much concerning the present state of our nation, the nature of Pentecost as it now exists, and the gray mood this old man often occupies. His well, though, remains. His grace renews. Here and there along the way connection is verified by an overflow, a tug on the anchor-line. In the midst of the storm, He is with me in the next step……