Bullets

• I've been watching the Olympics (like millions of others.) Chaos had a question: how come they never seem to show the sports WE want to watch (that would be Tae Kwon Do sparring.) I suppose it's because the Americans took two bronze and a silver. Only gold medals seem to get the prime-time.
• Tonight is another belt-test. I haven't been to karate like I should be for the past month. I've Cat Scratch Fever (no, not the song!) -- it's been hard to shake. I'm much better now. I never knew that adults could even get this disease. Thank you, Johnny Cat.
• Chaos has had medical problems as well this month. When it rains, it pours.
• Perhaps we should take this as a sign to slow down. I just haven't been able to whack all the moles this month (you know the game -- Whack a Mole.) I've started out several times in the last couple of weeks and not complete all the errands. I have a basket of shoes in the living room that need to be taken to the shoe repair store (the one where the lady always tries to charge me in yen....) I have laundry to do and dry cleaning to drop off. I have boxes to recycle and Goodwill stuff to donate. I have put off doctor stuff until "urgent" has turned into "super-duper extra urgent."

There are times in our lives where it seems like we have a huge task -- that we are supposed to use just our two hands to keep all the bobbing corks submerged in our own personal bucket -- and at times we can succeed and at times there are just too many corks bobbing around. We think we have to choose which corks to keep submerged and which to just let go. Then I begin to realize that this is bad theology. We don't do it all alone. We have our families and we are in community -- I'm not going to mis-quote 1 Corinthians 10:13 and say that "God won't give you anything you can't handle!" That's not what the verse says. In face we need to pick it up at verse 11:

These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don't repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don't be so naive and self-confident. You're not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it's useless. Cultivate God-confidence. No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it. (The Message)

We will never be tempted beyond our limits -- not that we won't get things that we can't handle alone. The fact of the matter is 1) we ARE given things that we can't handle alone and 2) we are never truly ever alone. My personal cork bucket is not in isolation -- it's connected to my husband's cork bucket which is connected to other cork buckets -- we are all in this together. We have our community -- our family, our friends and our church family. We have God; even when it appears that God is silent and inactive, God is with us. God is always with us.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less ... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind ..." John Donne