March 29 – “Steak and Sopapillas”

Sunday.  It's the one day that can't be the same old thing week after week.  Especially at Seaside.  For one thing, we never know how many people will be there.  Or which ones.  I'm never quite sure what's going to happen, either.  It hit me while I was preparing for today that next week is Palm Sunday.  That means two things.  One: I have to get some palm branches from somewhere to make the palm crosses that we give away.  I guess it gives me yet another excuse to stop by our Galveston house again.  That's where I've harvested them for fourteen years.  And two: week after next is Easter.  That means Sunrise service on the beach.  Or maybe in the parking lot if there is not enough beach to set up on.  It means breakfast for the community after the service.  It means we have to get busy and be ministers to the West End again.  It's about time.   We went with Rita and Kelly and Cory and Houston and Ashley to lunch today.  Are you ready for this?  We went to Happy Buddha.  That's Chinese food.  Didn't think I had it in me, did you?  Mom and Chris split some kind of dessert-tasting chicken.  I have no idea what it was called.  Want to know what I had?  Steak and sopapillas.  I figured they couldn't mess up steak too bad – as long as they let me cut it up for myself.  And they didn't call those fried things sopapillas either.  But they just needed some honey and maybe sugar and cinnamon.   Chris had to go to Bay City again this afternoon.  Her mom has another doctor's appointment tomorrow.   This one is with the neurologist.  The last six months have really been a load of stress on Chris.  The circumstances themselves have been bad enough with finding out about her mom's cancer and walking with her through chemo.  But as time has gone on Chris has been driving back and forth to Bay City, and then driving her mom and dad into Houston for the appointments.  This has become one of those things that I have a hard time not worrying about.  I have to go back to God's promises over and over again.   Luke 12:22-26 says, "Then Jesus said to his disciples: 'Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.  Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.  Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?  Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?'"   Father, watch over Chris for me.  Amen.