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Becky went to a women’s retreat this weekend. She left Friday afternoon and didn’t get back until Saturday night. It was my first real extended time of getting to “kid wrangle”, as Steve puts it. (Of course, he’s got three kids, so my one probably doesn’t really count…) I have gained an entirely new appreciation for the things my wife deals with on a daily basis.

I had 28-or-so hours that Becky was gone, and had one real task I needed to complete: the back yard needed mowed. That was just about all I got done while she was gone. Well, not quite all. I did get over to church to finish debugging the problems with the projector… and didn’t get anywhere. I’ll talk through it with tech support today. And I did spend a couple hours while she was napping Saturday afternoon watching the Cubs game. So I could have gotten a couple other things done. But still.

There’s this whole issue of how much stuff there is to remember with a kid; you have to remember to take the diaper bag everywhere, and to remember to refill it when it’s empty. And remembering to check (and change) her diaper often enough that she’s comfortable and not overflowing… And remembering to take the opportunity to change her diaper at the “family room” on the one end of the mall before walking all the way to the other end. And remembering to use the facilities before you leave home since it’s a real pain to try to park a stroller in the restroom next to you when you’re out… And remembering that mealtimes aren’t nearly so flexible for Laura as they are for me… 7, noon, and 5 are pretty well set in stone. And on… and on… I assume you’re getting the idea.

Laura and I had a good time while Becky was gone; we spent a lot of time together, and that’s good. I don’t get to spend as much time with her as I’d like to. But I’ll tell you this - we were both sure glad to see her get home. :-)

[a nod to Prof. Peter Schickele for a title I could play off of…]

This has definitely been one of those boring weeks, especially as far as work is concerned. As I wrote about before, I have been assigned to be the team lead for a new project. It’s not a particularly big or long project as our projects go, probably me and one other software person for 12 months. It’s becoming less scary as I get into it further; I’m understanding exactly what needs done, and I know I can handle it… I’ve done most all of it before.

The bad part this week is the boredom; we’re in a planning phase where our plan isn’t due until the end of this month. My project lead was on vacation all of this week and will be all of next week, too. I need her input to finish planning. So what do I get in the mean time? I have a bunch of half-finished spreadsheets that need her input and approval before I can finish them. I’ve had most of those done since the early part of this week. So I’m sitting here now posting on my blog, inflicting my boredom on you readers who are probably now bored reading this.

I hate having nothing to do. If I have tasks to work on, I’m a happy camper, the day goes fast, I’m ultra-productive, things are good. When I don’t have stuff to do, I go crazy. Time drags. Listening to music doesn’t seem to help. I can’t exactly sit here and read a book… although maybe there are some technical journals or FAA publications or something that I can read. Yeah, that’d be exciting. :-)

I don’t even know if I feel better after having complained here about my boredom… but it least I spent 5 minutes doing it… less than three hours until the workday is over….

So, it’ 8:30 on Saturday morning and I’m sitting here in the dining room watching Laura finish her breakfast. Her normal schedule is 16 oz of formula in the morning, but she’s drinking out of a 7 oz bottle. That means the real trick for mom and dad is to notice when the bottle’s getting empty so we can refill it before she throws it on the floor. Then she’ll eat her Cheerios, so I guess she’s doing like I do and having her bowl of cereal in the morning, she’s just having it separately whereas I put my milk and Cheerios together. :-)

I think it’s going to be a fairly slow Saturday, which will be nice. Just some odd tasks to complete around the house, and I need to go to the music store and buy a new microphone boom since mine at church has totally stripped out and won’t hold my mic up. Oh, and I have to type up the powerpoint slides for tomorrow’s church service…. such are the hazards of getting a new projector.

Well Becky just got up now so I suppose that means it’s time for the day to start. Thank God for weekends. :-)

Within the last 7 days I’ve heard three separate sermons from the same passage. This doesn’t happen all the time. Well, for starters, usually I don’t even hear three sermons in a week. But the Moody conference last week gave me 12 general session messages to choose from. And when I get three in the same week, I think it’s time that I sit up and listen a little more closely.

The third sermon of the bunch was from a guest speaker at our church on Sunday. It honestly wasn’t even that interesting, was pretty shallow. But, it got me turned back to that passage. The other two messages were from D. A. Carson and Tony Evans. Now those will get your attention. :-)

The passage in question is Ephesians 3:14-21:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith–that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Tony Evans laid it out this way: Paul is praying for us to have more intimacy with Christ. Intimacy provides capacity, and the capacity provides power - God’s power. In other words, if we are lacking intimacy with Christ, our capacity for God to work in our lives is diminished. On the other hand, if we pursue intimacy with Christ, our capacity for God to work in our lives is increased, “more abundantly than all we ask or think”.

D. A. Carson, though, had the illustration while teaching this passage that will stick with me the longest. His question was this: why does Paul pray that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” when he’s talking to Christians, who presumably already have Christ in their life? He told this story, which I’ll paraphrase in the first person:

“When my wife and I bought our first house, it was what they call a “handyman’s dream”. You know what that means… it needed a lot of work. There was black and silver wallpaper in the bedroom. The previous owners had two dogs who were rarely let out - there was still dog poo in the corners of the house. The walls were dingy. It needed lots and lots of work. When we bought the house and moved our stuff in, it was ours, we lived there, but we didn’t really inhabit the place yet.

“But as we continued to live there, we starting working on the house. We knocked down a wall to expand the kitchen. We painted. We took down the black and silver wallpaper. We cleaned up the dog poo. Had we stayed there longer, we undoubtedly would have built on an addition when the kids were born. After some period of time, we could step back, look at the house, and say, ‘wow, we really live here.’”

This, Dr. Carson says, is the difference Paul is talking about in Ephesians 3. When we first accept Christ, our lives are a lot like that handyman’s dream house. There’s black and silver wallpaper on the walls. There’s dog poo in the corners. (“Dog poo” is an exact quote from Carson, by the way. :-)) Christ is living there, but He doesn’t really “inhabit” the place in the way that Paul means. What God wants to do is to clean us up, to do that painting, take down the wallpaper, and remodel the place so that our Christ is really inhabiting our lives.

This illustration was the most striking, insightful picture to me from the whole conference. I want to let Christ continue transforming my life, until it just radiates from me that “Christ lives here”. With three sermons in a week, I think God was trying to tell me something. I hope I’m paying enough attention.