Kingdom of God?

I know I haven't posted anything of note in a long while. Truth is I have been struggling! I can't completely describe the way I feel, but I miss my friends. It feels like I graduated 50 or so students instead of the normal 10 and to make it worse I don't have 40 or so left to hang with and ease the pain. I look at Court and I know she is home sick and it hurts. Avery, is probably just gett'n into the terrible two's but I can't help but blame myself when she acts bad.

The church has some positive things going, but the other stuff (mentioned above) is fighting for my focus.

We have a goal of planting a church, but we also know there are long odds on that and we can't do it all today anyway. We can however, try to be kind today and show concern for others when the opportunity arises. That whole Love God, by Loving your neighbors thing.

Anyway, in an effort to be kind we spent the last couple of weeks inviting the neighbors on our street to a cook out. We live on a small street. (8 houses, 1 duplex) It is a bit scary asking people to come over you don't know, much like asking that girl out in high school. Truth, I never asked a girl out in high school that I wasn't sure she was going to say yea. Thanx to weeks of investigation! So maybe asking neighbors to come over for a cook out is scarier. We asked anyway, and waited...

The last couple of days have been hard, for the reasons mentioned above. I 1/2 expected nobody to show up 2nite. I am not sure I could have handled that, but I was preparing myself. God has a way of giving us what we need, cause at 6:30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time people began to show up to our house. Nothing amazing happened 2nite, but we do know our neighbors. I can't speak for our neighbors, but I believe they appreciated the opportunity to meet us and to meet other neighbors or renew old friendships. Turns out one of our neighbors had a birthday 2day so we sang and another neighbor took the time to buy balloons for all of the kids. That was cool! Avery of course released her balloon the minute it touched her hands which was actually really awesome in Big Sky Country, because we could see that balloon floating away for a long, long, long, long time.

For what it is worth, I am thankful for the gift of time our neighbors gave us 2nite. We needed it! We needed to be reminded God would provide and 2nite He provided by sending our neighbors over to honor our invitation. I have no idea if any of our neighbors read this blog, but thanks!