I'm Losing My Marbles

Good Sunday afternoon! It's quiet here today as we've sent Mark back to GA and Hamp is doing some carpentry work at the church office. It's nice not to have something pressing to do and I'm trying not to nap so I can go to bed earlier and get back on some kind of schedule.

If you pay much attention to my blog layout, you'll notice that I changed the picture of me and Hamp on the side. Yes, we're in orange Orioles shirts. (Have you ever noticed that most people look terrible in orange?) We haven't defected as Braves fans, but since we're living in Baltimore and they play in Atlanta, we've had to make some concessions if we want to see a baseball game. I have to say it's more fun to go to a game in Baltimore because we take the water taxi to the Inner Harbor and only have to walk a few blocks and we're there. We either reverse the route after the game or just walk the almost 2 miles back home. Whichever way we choose, it's much faster than trying to get out of Turner Field and battling interstate traffic for many miles. We took Mark to the game on Friday and got a few pictures of our adventure.







It was the first time we had ridden the water taxi at night and that was a lot of fun. I just try not to think about how disgusting it would be if we ever ended up in the harbor water for any reason. I'm not sure there's much actual water in it and I don't want to know what's there instead.







So about my lost marbles...yesterday evening at church, the guest pastor was talking about living intentionally, which is something God keeps bringing before me on a regular basis. He explained how we can give ourselves a more realistic view of life and our choices by putting marbles in a jar for whatever you want it to represent. He used the example of counting up how many Saturdays a dad would have left before his child graduates from high school. You would do the math, put that many marbles in the jar, and each Saturday take one out and place in another jar. After a while, there would be visible proof of the passing time and that father would know if he was investing it wisely and deliberately in his child's life.

As he moved on, I found myself wondering just how many weeks I would have left if I lived to be 75 years old. For math's sake, I rounded up to my birthday which is in October and came up with 1,144 weeks. While that sounds like a lot of time, consider that at my present age, I've already lived 2,756 weeks. And that's when it was no longer just an illustration. What am I doing, really, with the time God has given me? Am I truly living to glorify Him no matter what circumstances come my way or is it mostly just about me? My pain, my loss, my misfortune...my, me, mine. My walk this morning consisted of mostly confession and repentance as I surrendered my will once again and asked God for His for my life. And I'll be looking for a place to put my jar of marbles that we'll be adding to the apartment very soon.