Day 19, August 21

Day 19, August 21

Rain in the morning ended thoughts of an early morning walk.  I turned again to updating and learning more about what I can do with the technological tools in my hands.  All of our devices and their instructions can do much more than we are accustomed to doing with them because we simply do not take the time to learn the details.  We use what we need right now with intentions of looking closely to the features we leave behind when we get a chance.  I have my chance.  I find myself calling out to Kay, “Hey, look at this,” with each new door I open.

We are finding more and more connections among the readings, experiences, talks, and prayers that focus in our morning devotions.

I am using the same chance to sort through financial documents and all those pieces of paper that I want to keep managing their use from stacks to files.  I do this when I tire of reading.

I read about Gulfstream in a book loaned by Joel, who works there. The Legend of Gulfstream is a helpful story to know about the largest employer in the Savannah area including several in our congregation.  And, being an aviation enthusiast with a dormant private pilot’s license, I have some connections to the industry myself.

I also began reading Shifting Realities: Information Technology and the Church.  This is more like required reading for a class in seminary.  I expect the ending will be an assignment to write a paper on the profound affects of digital technology on our lives.  Maybe I can just download one!

After lunch, I took that walk around the Christmount campus that includes forests and rocky streams.  It is not cold here, but much cooler than Coastal Georgia and seemingly less humid even when it is raining.  There are a lot of private residences in the hills on the property.

We have a little frustration with recycling.  We have grown used to composting food scraps and recycling just about everything else.  It is hard to put rinds and peels into the trash.  We can recycle aluminum cans and plastic bottles at the Guest House HQ but what of the metal cans and paper we no longer need?  I tried briefly to find a drop off in Black Mountain.  Only curbside pickup is made public.  We are not going to save it up and bring it home even though that was our first thought.  It is trash for now and we are living with that.

DB turns from cheap grace to costly grace in tonight’s encounter.  He can talk about giving one’s life for Christ.  I have visited the Flossenbürg concentration camp where the Nazis hanged him just before the Allies in World War II liberated the camp.  Grace was costly to God.  Grace is the good news, “which must be sought again and again, the gift which has to be asked for, the door at which one has to knock.”  If we are not part of the solution in Godly relationships; we are part of the problem.