Another Week in Paradise

This week’s pictures are of Karen and Emmy relaxing together on the veranda (as we apparently call patios and porches in Australia), Roland watching his home team, the Brisbane Broncos, win the Grand Final in Rugby League, and a picture of Roland and me with a dear old friend of Roland’s named Brendan Kelly. Brendan was a private school principal who attended the church Roland pastored at the time in Maryborough, Australia. They used to share a daily early morning prayer and jogging time. He counts Brendan as one of his closest friends, and one who most enthusiastically shared Roland’s understanding of grace and vision for the church. By a remarkable and possibly miraculous chain of events, Brendan has suddenly become the senior pastor of a church in Toowumba, a couple of hours from here, that has a Sunday morning attendance of 1,200 people. Roland and I visited Brendan’s church this past Sunday and had a great visit with him and his wife over lunch afterwards.

Life is good. Karen takes long walks in the park every day, surrounded by parrots, giant lizards and exotic flowers. Jake starts work today at a store that sells what he’s convinced are the clothes the cool kids wear. Charlotte’s working, enjoying the Hearn kids and keeping up with her U.S. friends on her laptop PC.

I wake up rested at 6:15, enjoy a cup of tea on the veranda and go to work at an office surrounded by raucous kookaburras making it sound like a Tarzan movie. At 10:00 or 10:30, we take a 30-minute break for morning tea and a light snack. We get home from work at about 5:30 and the house is filled with the laughter of Mercer and Hearn kids, aged 11-18, thoroughly enjoying each other’s company. August was the best month ever for my employer, Trade Alliance Group, and I expect the same will be true of September when the numbers are in. I’m starting to learn the job, so I’m feeling a little more secure on that front. It would be nice to be rich. It would be nice to be a part of a big church that we started. It would be nice to be 30 instead of 50 years old. But I’m preaching tomorrow so I’ve been thinking a lot this week about finding the love and joy and peace of God in the middle of the ordinary frustrations, limitations, grief, hope, failure and successes of ordinary daily life. And I am finding them.

Life is good.