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I have figured out why it seems like I have been away from this blog.
See, I've gained a little weight over this last year so my perception of time is completely different than yours....
OK, so I've been slacking off. But it is true about the weight gain and I am slowly doing something about that. Like buying pants with bigger waste sizes.
Meanwhile, I continue my daily regiment of non-exercise by driving long distances for the soul purpose of sitting still in front of a computer. Sometimes I talk on the phone, too!
Don't laugh: It takes a lot of effort to carry around a 5 ounce headset! Let's see you wear one day in and day out.
And while I drive my ridiculously long commute I've decided to practice what one preacher said many years ago: Get in the Word.
His illustration was something like this: As a boy living on a farm he would help his mother out in the kitchen before he was big enough to do other chores. As his mother would sift flour with one of those hand-cranked sifters, the wire mesh at the bottom would get all clogged and the flour would not come out. He would then take the sifter to the pump and run water over the sifter until the sifter was clean again. It was the continuous action of the water that would clean out the clogs. He wouldn't scrub it or anything else but let the water run over the sifter.
In the same way, we should let the Living Water flow over us and through us to clean out all the gunk in our lives. The only way for that to happen is to be in the Word of God. A lot.
Often we just read a verse or maybe even a chapter. That's just not enough.
So I've loaded up my mp3 Bible and have been listening to the New Testament so far. It takes about a week to get through from Matthew to Revelation, depending on traffic. I'm going to stick with this for a few more weeks before adding in the Old Testament.
Listening is definitely different than reading and while listening while driving isn't what I would call serious study, going through the New Testament this way has helped me put some of the pieces together better than before, such as which parables belong in which gospel account, and how many of Jesus' miracles are repeated. I "know" these things but going through an audio version uses a different part of the brain, I guess, so it sticks differently. Plus, the continuous washing always reveals something more each time.
I'm eating better all the way around, too. As a field technician I would, more often than not, stop at a fast food restaurant for lunch or dinner - or both! Thus my extra gravity. Working in an office (and being on a tight budget) is forcing me to evaluate my eating habits in both calories and dollars. One of the first things to go was sodas or "pop" for my Ohio in-laws. Instead of a daily 20-ounce or even a 1-liter I have none. I define "none" just like the diet sodas define "zero calories" - it's there if you actually look. All summer I think I had 5, maybe 6 sodas of any size. That's less gunk right there.
So maybe I can trim the fat of both my physical and spiritual bodies as we get into fall. Since I'm in my late 30s (for EXTREMELY large values of 30. If you count in
BASE-12 then I'm only 34!) it's not too late.
Already I've posted more frequently than I have for a while! Once I get down to a size svelte, I'll be posting like crazy!