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Excuse Me

             Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago. (Isaiah 25:1)

          Yesterday evening was difficult. Something that was supposed to take 30 minutes took two hours, so I didn’t get to the prayer meeting. I am not making as much progress on the phrase count checks as I’d like. Never mind the fact that what I’d like would require that I check 439 phrases per day, some of them with more than ten occurrences. So far, I’ve averaged around 260 per day. Next week, I have 4431 individual words to check (738/day). Yeah. I know. Reason has nothing to do with it.

          Today started out comparatively well, until I was on my way home from errands. Then I got stressed again. Ignore the fact that I reviewed 87 phrases while making signs at the library. Also ignore the fact that I’ve accomplished some good stuff in the past two days, weeks, months, years… And what may have made it worse is that I took a self-evaluation for a spiritual formation study starting next week. The worst thing I can do to myself is evaluate myself because that tends to involve going into the “forest” I described on Facebook a while ago.

          This isn’t a pity party, and it does connect to the passage of the day because this passage is part of the correct response. While Isaiah wrote this, David comes to mind, often including as part of his songs a chorus of “Woe is me” or “Shatter their teeth!” before returning to sing God’s praises. Two things of which I feel comfortably sure are that God is God and I am not, (All together now, “Thank You, God!”) and that God won’t let me miss an exit without having detour planned by which He’ll get me back on the right road.

          In other words, when I was able to effectively say,

    Excuse me while I pull out my hair and run in circles, Lord. OK, I’m done acting silly. Now, let’s get down to business. Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, 

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