The Sleepy Sunday

As I shared with you in yesterday's post we stayed up most of Saturday night/Sunday morning getting our college football fix. Although I don't regret it, I certainly paid for it the next day. I preached two Protestant services at the North Speicher Chapel and attended the LDS services at the chapel in the CSH ("cash": Combat Surgical and Hospital center). Despite my exhaustion, services went quite well.

We opened with the traditional hymn Holy, Holy, Holy and then sang two contemporary favorites of mine: In Christ Alone and Shout to the North. The text I preached on was James 4:1-10. I addressed the nature of insecurities, how our desire for security leads us to make idols of things that are otherwise good: promotion, retirement, family relationship, hobbies, acceptance from others, etc. The thrust of the message is that regardless where we are in our stand before God, it is less than God demands--we choose freindship with the world over loyalty to God on a regular basis. Yet with his tender mercies, we can continue to benefit from the atonement, repent of our sins, and find security in the Lord.

After the 2000 HRS protestant service I made it back to the house for the tail end of a barbecue celebrating the announced promotion of MAJ Butts to LTC (should take place in a few months). Steak was grilled (and Dawn will be pleased to know that I ate my steak and enjoyed it--it just wasn't as good as a gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwich), and salads and casseroles were available--pretty impressive actually. Afterwards, we went up on top of the roof and watched a movie. We played it on a little DVD player, running the video through a projector on the side of the wall and the audio through a speaker system.


It was a full moon. (The light here, of course, is from the flash of my camera.) It might seem from the last two postings that we have a lot of downtime, or that we don't work very hard. That's not the case at all. Many of us had forgotten the importance of recreation and enjoying one another's company outside the stressful work conditions. In the past few weeks we have been taking better care of ourselves and one another. Of course, we are able to relax for a bit because there are soldiers covering night shifts and others pulling perimeter defense (guard duty).