Last night we discovered our heat wasn’t working. So, what do you do at 11:30 PM when you find your heat isn’t working? You add five more blankets to your bed and sleep in your pants, socks, shirt, and sweatshirt. We survived and woke up in the “refreshing” 56 degree air.
Jim called the furnace company around 7:30 AM and they told us it would be $85 to come out and then $85/hour for service. Thank God for family! Jim’s cousin Russ works for a heating and cooling company, so he came out and replaced our ignitor switch for $50. We are now relaxing in our 71 degree living room. It’s so nice when God provides.
In other news, we just got home from a conference at church. It was about the book of Colossians, poverty and wealth, oppression, and a lot of other challenging things. Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat lead most of the time. They have written a book called “Colossians: Remixed.” The curriculum for high school d-groups was based on this. After teaching it myself, it was interesting to hear what they, the authors, had to say. It was a lot of information that will take time to sort through, but it was good.
We had break-out sessions and Jim and I chose to go to one on wealth and whether creating it or redistributing it is the better idea. Don Golden, our lead pastor, and Dick DeVos, you may remember him from the governor race :-), led that session. I was very intrigued to hear what Dick DeVos had to say about wealth. A lot of people were taken back to hear that Dick would be speaking, but I don’t think a lot of people realize that Dick is a member of Mars Hill and belongs to a house church. He spoke honestly and openly about how he and his family distribute their wealth. It is so easy to judge the extremely wealthy because they have so much, but we don’t even know what they do with that wealth and how much they give away. Not all do that, but some do.
There of course was the talk of war and how to bring about peace. Always a interesting and controversial conversation that brings up ideas and thoughts that I have to struggle through.
I am thankful for a community that constantly causes me to question and figure things out on my own.