Update time

First of the New Year and time for resolutions? I seldom make resolutions anymore as too many times in the past I broke my resolutions. So, I suppose somewhere along the timeline I resolved to not make resolutions. However, I do like to continually update my life, that is, look at where I have been and what I am doing to see how I might improve. So, it is now update time.

Time to update this blog and perhaps other things in my life.

First the blog. Much has happened since last I wrote. Mainly good things with some not so good things.

We are slowly getting settled in our new home in Texas. Had to clear out a few critters first. As the photo in another blog below of the beautiful but dead deadly Coral Snake attest.

We have been on the road a lot, so it has been slow going. We got to stop going to get going on the home.

Had a great time with Heatherly, Mike, MeiLin, and Maiya for Christmas and soon will be headed to WA and then BC. Time to visit Amanda, friends, and do some teaching at TWU. Then head back and get busy with yard, etc., in the spring.

So, now that a quick update of where and what is done, what about my personal life? Big priority is finding the right church home. Next, is getting ready to move toward retirement through semi-retirement. I believe my focus will be on getting in better shape physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Need to get back on a regular exercise schedule and find that church home, or as AA says "First things First."

There is indeed a season for all things in this life. I knew that in some indescribable way the day I stood with my father as he stood at the bedsides while his parents, my grandparents, were passing from this life.

It was as if I saw the past and future as a progression of generational shape shifting images where the youngest progressed from being the accompanying consoling grandchild to the grieving child to the passing. I have shifted through those positions along with my wife and daughters (taking my place as the consoling ones) until soon it will be my turn in the bed and then the great beyond.

I have come to the full realization of how pregnant the phrase "great beyond" truly is. What better term for something so totally other. We know something scientifically tangible about life in the womb or before birth, and of course we all know something of this things called living as crazy wonderful as it is, but we all know experientially nothing about what lies after living.

Those of us who are Christians do have this great and blessed hope that is in Christ Jesus that indeed he has gone to prepare a place, a mansion, for us in His father's house. So, while I have much living left to be done, I believe and hope, I also increasingly turn my thoughts and feelings to looking "forward to the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Tit. 2:13).

So I make no resolutions, but I do update my hope to live the life left to me to the fullest and hopefully becoming more Christ like having this mind in me that is also in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5). Living with faith, hope, and love; faith in the now present of God, hope in eternity, and love for God and of God.