Strange venues

Stretching yourself. Today the sermon in church was about faithfulness. Not the faithfulness of God to us, but our faithfulness to God and to each other. Oddly, in the middle of a sermon about our faithfulness to God and to each other, I was able to bear witness to a little bit of faithlessness. In the middle of the last hymn,
"Great is His Faithfulness", a former mother-in-law was staring daggers at her former daughter-in-law. For her part, the former daughter-in-law didn't seem to rise to the bait. A sad little drama. Unfortunate that the words of the sermon don't seem to last very long. Not much shelf-life. Hell, that's not even indicative of shelf-life, since the words of the sermon were so fresh in our ears.

Perhaps it has more to do about how much we listen to the words of the sermon in the first place.

This afternoon, I took my niece, Lily, bowling in Gwinnett County. It took me a long time to find a bowling alley which catered to children and families. This one clearly did, since it seemed that there were at least three children on every lane. The alley was lit with flashing lights and filled with music. Children were bouncing all over the lanes and dropping balls on the alleys. I think that they need to get the kids matched up better with balls, so the weight of the balls don't cause the younger arms to drop the balls at the end of their approaches. It made me wince everytime I saw them go down.

Lily showed very little patience in something she wanted to do. When it was her time to bowl, she would pick up whichever ball met her eye, then almost ran down to the lane to throw the ball down. Her form wasn't bad. She had some decent balls. But her lack of patience really hurt her. Lily is quite athletic; I think she could be good at bowling if she worked at it.

Of course, she concentrated quite a bit on trying to get me to allow her to play in the arcade after we finished our bowling. Nevertheless, I was strong in saying, "No." As we were leaving in the parking lot, she was quick to tell me that "her daddy" had taken her to the arcade after they bowled. I told that was her daddy, not her uncle.

I must confess that when I bowled, I got progressively poorer as I went. I know it had to do with the strain on my joints. When I rolled the third or fourth ball down the lane, all of a sudden, a pain hit the joint in my right shoulder and it became harder to keep my form straight. You know, bowling is like pitching or shooting baskets. You have to keep the same form, otherwise you lose your consistency.

I started out hot. I bowled a strike in my first ball. I bowled a spare in the second. From there, the wheels came off the wagen. Clearly, fifty one years awaits me in December. I have got to do something to get myself back in better shape.

I did have fun. We all have to stretch in different ways.