Breakfast with Barabbas

For whatever reason, I am reading about the crucifixion this morning while I drink my coffee. Damon isn't up yet, Carrie's popped her head in on her way to the basement to be alone with her computer, and I am reading through Luke.

I read the part about Barabbas being a murderer and a leader of an insurrection and remembered a video clip I'd seen in church a few months ago. I have a feeling it was shown on or around Easter, which makes sense, but I wanted to see it again. I found it here on YouTube. It's by Judah Smith, whom I know nothing about. Put your distractions aside, make sure your sound is turned on, and listen with your heart. I think it's powerful. Let it be powerful.

It's easy to "play church games", as he says, at Christmas and Easter. Someone else coined "the poinsettia and lily club", which makes me giggle, but it's sad if you stop to think about it. Here we have this amazing Creator who is waiting for us to invite Him in so that we don't have to do this wild and crazy life alone, and we often don't bother to ask. We're tired and stressed out and turning to the wrong things to help get ourselves through. We're bitter and snippy and short, and we blame it on things like "not getting enough sleep","having too much to do" or "not having enough coffee", some of my special phrases to fall back on. Really, I'm just not full of Jesus. That's what it boils down to. I'm trying to do it, whatever the "it" is, myself.

So give up 8 minutes of your day to give the video a chance to soak into your heart. It's probably the total time of the commercial breaks in your must-see-TV. Let Jesus be Jesus on more than just Easter and Christmas. At the very least, realize that you're not supposed to be doing all this alone, and that He can do a better job at all of it than you can by yourself. And to quote someone else famous, "that's all I have to say about that."

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Things One and Three are enjoying VBS this week. I may have mentioned we've had the CD of the music for weeks now, and they all have their favorites. I can hardly get my bum into the driver's seat before they're starting with their "play number 6, please" and "do number one!"

Last night they made paper plate and streamer quail as their crafts. It probably sounds ridiculous, but they are actually adorable. There's a folded paper plate as the body with another piece of plate cut out as the neck and head. Perpendicular to the body is a drinking straw with streamers attached, and there's another straw poking out of the bottom to be the stand or the legs or whatever. So cute! You should have seen a room full of 75 or so fluttering streamered quail last night. It's been raining for days, off and on, so a LOT of high energy was squished into the big room at the church. Contagious.

And as far as I've seen from Facebook, Thing Two is having a good time at camp. I don't suppose the campers have any dry laundry left and that everything is smelling of worms, but that's why God made washing machines. I imagine they've been dodging storms like we have, and I haven't heard if they've all ended up in the dining hall basement yet, but it wouldn't surprise me any. Wouldn't be camp if you weren't down there, singing songs, waiting out the vengeful storm clouds.

Dada had fish and chips for dinner in London last night. His meetings aren't going quite as well as he'd like, but he's hanging in there. He got to see Big Ben and the Queen's guard and a 15-foot blue rooster. Yes, you read that right.

The garbage trucks are out and about now, so I suppose a small boy will be joining me shortly. He had a great appointment with Dr. Jon yesterday, who declared him to be looking great. He weighed in at 42 pounds 13 ounces and is 42 3/4 inches tall. And he has huge, stinky feet. And two days ago he ate an entire pack of sugarfree gum. But he's cute when he's sleeping, and when he's sucking his thumb and Dr. Jon reminds him, "germs!" and he pops that thumb back out to look suspiciously at it. He had me in tears during the appointment because of his back-and-forth with Dr. Jon. They're hysterically funny together. Especially when Dr. Jon is examining his abdoment and the kid is squirming and thrashing all over the table because he's so ticklish. I love that!

He got his one shot for measles-mumps-rubella-chicken pox and he didn't fuss at all. Nurse Tonya used Carrie's favorite tool, the pain blocker pad, which is a plastic piece that's flat and covered in little teeth. You press it onto your skin and it feels pokey, so you don't notice the needle going in also as your brain can only process so many things at once. It's a great trick. Tonya pushed that pad onto him, he yelped a second, she said, "tell me when you're ready", she stabbed that needle in, he said, "I'm weady" and she said, "I'm done!" It was great. He got a Daffy Duck bandaid, turned down a treat from Dr. Jon's personal chocolate stash (to MUCH amusement from the rest of the nurses) and declared, "I have a big wowwipop in da caw". Which he did. I'd bought him a huge one from the dollar store two days ago and we'd brought it with us in case of a shot.

Have a great over the hump day!

And those of you who haven't clicked that YouTube link because you wanted to read this whole post first, now you're done. Go click it. =)