Whatnot

My 7 year old picked the following from his devotional Bible for a morning reading.  He read it to me and it just blew me away.  God is cool.

25 "I tell you, do not worry. Don't worry about your life and what you will eat or drink. And don't worry about your body and what you will wear. Isn't there more to life than eating? Aren't there more important things for the body than clothes?

 26 "Look at the birds of the air. They don't plant or gather crops. They don't put away crops in storerooms. But your Father who is in heaven feeds them. Aren't you worth much more than they are?

 27 "Can you add even one hour to your life by worrying?

 28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the wild flowers grow. They don't work or make clothing. 29 But here is what I tell you. Not even Solomon in all of his glory was dressed like one of those flowers.

 30 "If that is how God dresses the wild grass, won't he dress you even better? After all, the grass is here only today. Tomorrow it is thrown into the fire. Your faith is so small!

 31 "So don't worry. Don't say, 'What will we eat?' Or, 'What will we drink?' Or, 'What will we wear?' 32 People who are ungodly run after all of those things. Your Father who is in heaven knows that you need them.

 33 "But put God's kingdom first. Do what he wants you to do. Then all of those things will also be given to you.

 34 "So don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Having read over my last few blog entries, I realize, I just don’t have that much to say in the blogosphere.  For the time being, I am abandoning my blog until such a time as I feel I have something to contribute beyond “I ate cereal today and my kids are awesome.”

I do feel I have a lot to say, only I really want to spend my time saying it in person and interacting with real live people – SO, if you are in the area, or are going to be, look me up and let’s grab a coffee and talk.  

tim-at-syracusevineyard.org is a great way to get in touch with me.  My wife can be reached at Melissa.wheeler –at- gmail.com

I now officially (though this began long ago) stop pretending to blog.  I might still read yours though.  So there.

Our church started a reading program partnering with a struggling school in our city.  In this program, volunteers read with a child for 30 minutes a week (sometimes a bit more) and work on fluency and inflection in reading (which improve understanding greatly).  Children who raise their reading test scores 20% are entered into a drawing and 8-10 kids get to go on a field trip to a shoe store in the mall and buy whatever shoes they want.  They get pretty excited.

The school we are working with this year just gave us some figures.  Of 68 fourth graders in this school, only 7 are reading at or above grade level.  61 are reading below grade level, if they can read at all.  

That’s not right.

Fall is here…the cool northeastern nights (mid 50’s and mid 60’s once the sun sets), changing leaves, and the arrival and departure of the GREAT NEW YORK STATE FAIR.  The NYS Fair takes place each year about 1.2 miles from my house.  We can hear the mainstage concerts in our back yard (Kenny Chesney, yea – cue sarcasm).  We take our boys during the special “ride all day” pass days, and for $15 per kid they can ride all the rides without tickets…We went opening day and had an amazing 11 hour day of fun, food, fun, food, and little rain…

BUT I digress.  Fall brings with it the packing up of the fair, the shipping off to school, the return to work for my wife (a teacher) and a fall season of ministry, friendship, and life.  Fall can be fun, but I’m still a bit in denial.  

I’ll  pretend it’s summer for a bit longer…our neighborhood bar-b-q never materialized….maybe there is still time.

I just got back from a refreshing week away from work life.  Lots of fun family time.

We camped at Buttermilk Falls State Park in the Ithaca, NY area…what a BEAUTIFUL place.  Just amazing.

Lots of fun watching my boys be boys with sticks and fire and woods.  They just love it.

And lots of time to not think about work at all which was great.

I had all these profound thoughts on when I was doing some reading but now they are all watered down….maybe they will dry out tomorrow.

Tim