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Our pastor, Phil, is currently in the middle of the Jesus Ultimatum series. It’s a 42-week series (I know, 42 sounds like a long time. I forget to exact number, but it is greater than 40 and less than 52. 42 sounded good for today. The exact number is largely irrelevant, except to Phil’s sermon preparation). Every week or two, we move from one sub-theme to the next, and each sub-theme has its own piece of artwork, commissioned and created within the church. Each piece of displayed at the front of the Worship Center through a portion of the series, and becomes the focal point for a week or two.

At some point within the past few weeks, somewhere around Palm Sunday and Easter, the sub-theme was “sacrifice.” [due to an unfortunate oversight, we missed the artwork during these few weeks. My ignorance is due to this oversight, not my lack of interest or attention to the sermons]. When I volunteered to participate in this art experience, this was my word. Thus, my piece of artwork:

Although it was not highlighted during the series, it was included in the art gallery during the 20th Anniversary Celebration last weekend. I’ve never had work in a gallery before!

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Yes, I do realize that at this moment, it is no longer Monday. However, I will make do with what I have. I have tried unsuccessfully to sleep, thus it still appears to be Monday. And I have accomplished a great deal, so as far as sleep deprivation goes, this was a good one.

The weekend… It was Youth Weekend to the third power. Little did we know when we scheduled Youth Sunday for yesterday that it would end up as such a big weekend. Gayton has been working on the future of youth ministry since I was hired as “interim” back in September. Now it has come to fruition, and they hired us. Yes, that’s right: us. I will be one of two youth pastors on staff, which is pretty exciting. I’m looking forward to June 1 (his start date. I won’t name him so he can tell people himself) and working as a team!

With the hiring process came town halls, meet/greets and youth events on top of the previously scheduled Youth Sunday and the work of making that happen (it is strange to be both candidate and employee at the same time!). We made it, and they did great! Two seniors preached, youth taught every Sunday School class and handled everything except running the business meeting. Hopefully I’ll have audio online of Emily’s opening joke, because it was a good one.

To-do list this week… not get sick. That tends to happen a.) when you are absolutely, completely and totally exhausted and b.) when the yellow/green stuff starts falling out of the trees and covering my car. A double-doozy this time around, but hopefully I’ll avoid it. Sleep would help, though.

And it’s the next-to-last week of class. There is a lot of work to do, and seemingly not enough time to do it. Guess insomnia helped find time tonight.

And…well, I’ll leave the third task ’til later.

On the bookshelf… Ecclesiastes. No, seriously. It’s the topic of our youth Wednesday night Bible study and (hopefully) the topic of my final Old Testament paper. So I should probably read it, and as many books as I can find about it.

What’s new… my job!! And our 1st home. We don’t actually have it yet, but it — and the story of finding it — will come. Check back soon for the updates!

Coming soon… a quick 8-hour round trip drive to Red Springs, NC, this week. We still need a (replacement) site for our youth mission trip this summer, so we are scouting out this possibility. Off to the other possibility next week, and reevaluating after that. And counting down the days to the last class of the semester.

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