Of Babies and Hurricanes

It was last year around this time when wind and rain tore up our neighborhood.  In fact, it did that to just about every neighborhood from here to the east coast as we suffered the after effects of Hurricane Sandy.

In our rainsoaked state with tree limbs lying strewn about, schools and businesses were closed.  I had certainly never had school called off in the fall before!

There are just a handful of occurrences in life when time seems to stop.  Natural disasters are one, and having a baby is another.

These times when the unrelenting call of "next" for one fleeting moment takes a break cause one to think in more introspective levels than normal life affords.

What's really important?

Money?
Work?
What so and so said the other day that really irked me?
What this or that person seems to think about me?
Having more rooms in our house?

Not really.

This little 8 pound girl.  That's life.  My sweet, beautiful wife.  Her laugh, her smile, how we can just talk and talk.  That's life.  My four other girls in all their strengths, quirks, and ponies.  That's life.  My gentle God, with his way of taking my fragile self and making me feel so warm and wanted inside.  That's life.

I could go on.  My parents, my brother, my friends, the dear people I work with, the students that make me laugh and the students who open their hearts to me.  All of these make life what it is too.

Relation-ship.  Where life is made.  Why did Jesus come?  Sin?  No.  That was simply a barrier to what He was really after: relation-ship.  Why did He even make the world?  Again, relation-ship.

Let's not let the stupid, passing things of life distract us and make us think that they are the real "stuff" of life.  Instead, let's, you and me, seek life where life truly is.