This week has been fairly nice on many levels. I was able to spend a fair amount of time this the week with my friend Alex from Columbia. It has been such a blessing watching him grow as a person and in his knowledge of God these last few weeks as he prepares to return home to his wife and son this weekend. We went over many of the basics of the faith. I could see a zeal for the Lord and his word developing in him. It is very exciting. We hope to continue to meet via Skype after he leaves.

We also were part of a pilot program to preview a bunch of videos called “God Provides” produced by Crown Financial Ministries.  These are really first rate videos that explores what real faith looks like from many angles through key Bible stories. The ones called “Lifted Up” and “Abraham and Isaac” were tear-jerkers for me.

Another interesting thing happened this week. My son T-10 was part of the awards ceremony for his 4th grade class. It was really cool. He won a bunch of academic awards including getting the high score for the math Olympiads, being part of the 4th grade Battle of the Books team which got a silver metal and he was chosen as the student of the year for his home room. We were so excited. Anyway, it was kind of interesting. We had to go up for the final award because they honor the parents as well as the students for that particular award. Of course I forgot and wore the rattiest pair of shorts and polo shirt I had that morning (almost didn’t take a shower) because it was fairly early in the morning and we usually don’t have to do much at these events. Anyway, during the ceremony I was feeling some discomfort in my knee. Not too bad but it was getting progressively worse. By the time it was time for us to go up, I could barely put weight on it. It was scary. I managed to get up there with Lisa because I didn’t want to ruin this special day for my son. Anyway, after getting home, the situation got progressively worse. By the evening, I could barely walk. I borrowed a colleagues crutches. It made it hard to sit for a ministry meeting, etc. It was difficult. It was a struggle to even get from my office to the kitchen at home. I was thinking it seemed like swelling and inflammation and didn’t feel any structural damage so I decided to wait till the next day. Well the next day, while weak, I was able to walk and everything was slowly getting back to normal.

God really reminded me of something yesterday. It takes so little time for a situation to go from great to bad to great again. It takes very little for that to happen. This reminded me of how fragile we are and how much we depend on God to keep us doing the things that we do. Pray as I send Alex off on Sunday and as we welcome several students from the airport this week.