Last night for Heartland

It was a long, emotion-filled evening as Heartland bid good-bye to its founding pastor. Brian and Deni Sunderly are moving on to another church in the area. Heartland, as we know it, is blending with Cornerstone Community Church. We'll be in the same building. We'll just be sharing services and relationships with the folks at Cornerstone.

Last night we played three sets of music, dedicated four of the 14 babies who have been born in the Heartland congregation in the past five years, heard the pastors from Cornerstone speak and make us welcome, then sat down to a pot-luck dinner. After all, we're Baptist. Food MUST be involved or it just ain't an appropriate gathering. It's okay. We didn't dance.

So over the next few weeks we'll be phasing out the Saturday night services and Heartland's folks will find new churches to call home. Hopefully, a good number of them will settle into Cornerstone or CrossLife, our daughter church in Elkridge.

It's hard to say good-bye, but the evening was sweet. And so it goes ...

Morning Light

I came into work later than usual this morning. That means that the sun was a little higher than normal. I suppose that means it is usually in my nose, because this it was certainly in my eyes during this commute.

I keep my cell phone in a clip-on holder on my visor. Not because I have to, mind you. Clifford is a big truck loaded with neat places a phone could go: in the Rubbermaid container between the seats; in the curious hole in the dash where some convenience I've been doing without for over two years would go; on the recessed dashboard dust pits just behind the defrost vents (although, to be fair, cell phones left there slide daringly back and forth threatening to fly out the window with every turn). I could do any of those things. But I keep it clipped to the visor. I like the "phhhhht" sound of the Velcro when I open the phone case and the feeling of security when I pat it closed after I put the phone back. But because I keep a phone clipped to the visor, I don't lower the visor. For possibly very similar reasons (who knows?) God doesn't lower the sun. I suppose we mutually agreed that it would be perfectly okay for me to squint halfway to work this morning. It was worth it.

When I turned off I-70 to take some back roads to work, the light was incredible. It was one of those mornings when it looked as if it might storm. The sky was a dark shade of grayish blue. An almost eerie background for everything the sun was shining on in the foreground. Like the seagulls that flashed and flickered as white punctuation points while they arced and wheeled in the sky. Or power lines that became silvery strands of garland along the twisting road. The trees were alternately whitewashed Wedgewood cameos or Victorian silhouettes, depending upon which turning the road took. As I neared work, the sky changed to a light blue striped by bright white clouds. The show was over, but thanks to AT&T wireless and my refusal to lower the visor, I saw the whole thing with an unobstructed view.

I'll Show You Mine if ...

The girls got home tonight. Joanie and I compared purchases. Actually, I didn't show Joan. I showed my nephew Kyle. He liked the Ampeg amp and the Warwick bass. So the feline exited the burlap. I had to admit to Joan that I had purchased not only an amp, but a guitar as well.

That prompted Joan to show me her purchases. If only we'd bought stock in Wal-Mart, we'd have been that much further ahead. I couldn't brag that I'd saved 70 percent on what I bought. But -- NEWSFLASH -- my personal over-the-shoulder editor informs me that a garden store in Evansville, Indiana is the happy recipient of her hard-earned funds. Excuse me. Anyway, I patiently and lovingly looked on and nodded as she proudly displayed the undeniable bargains she had garnered on her trip to the Hoosier State. I still don't understand the logic of an arbitrary 70 percent discount accordingly increasing the value of a given purchase, but I apparently don't have the discretionary embedded logic in my brain to appreciate such a "savings." Whatever.

So now they're back. I've rediscovered my faults. They seemed to disappear in their absence. And I can once again joyfully deliver hot tea to my loving spouse so she can either ignore it or forget it until it is sufficiently cooled to warrant reheating in the microwave--where it may languish for days before it is rediscovered. Yep. All is right with the world once again. How is your new year proceeding?