Yesterday . . . and early this morning

I learned a few things about Isle of Palms yesterday. First, it's not a long trip. It only took us about 2 1/2 -3 hours to get there. Making it even easier, it's almost all interstate driving. Second, when there's a blue flag flying, that means there are 'marine pests present.' Yesterday that meant that nasty little jellyfish were swimming around stinging people. I stayed out of the H2O. Not because I'm scared of jellyfish but I'm not that into pain and stinging especially when I'm not expecting it. The rest of our group threw caution to the wind and hopped in the water. Only two were stung. Just glad that one of them wasn't me. Third, IoP is close to Mt. Pleasant which meant that we were close to Andrew Kiel's home. Andrew's parents invited us to their house for supper - frogmore stew. More than just feeding us, though, they welcomed us in, gave us a chance to get cleaned up, to drink a lot of lemonade and chips, and to rest for a while. The frogmore stew was amazing! A few of us ate way, way, way too many shrimp. But Andrew's parents were more amazing. They told us stories about Andrew, showed us pictures of Andrew, and welcomed us like we were their own.

I walked into my house at 11:00pm and promptly fell asleep on the couch. My alarm clock woke me up at 2:01am. Why? you ask. Because the perseids meteor shower was visible in our neck of the woods from 2-5 this morning. I went outside to make sure we were going to be able to see it. I saw a couple of meteors and then woke my daughters up. For the next hour, we lay on our backs looking up at the night sky watching meteors shoot across the sky. It was cold. I was tired. It was uncomfortable. But we had a blast. We laughed and tried to see who could spot the most metoers. We decided that it was kind of like riding space mountain except there was no roller coaster, and space mountain is over quicker. If you missed the perseids meteor shower, here's a time-lapse video from 2007.

As we prepare to kick off Reveal in September with a focus on God revealing Himself to us, it's awesome to have interactions with Him through nature. The ocean waves, the starry sky, the falling meteor, and, yes, the stinging jellyfish all reveal to us a little of who God is. Are we listening? Are we watching? Are we aware that He's there?

Pray for our creative team meeting tonight at 6:00 and the band practice at 7:00.

--Peace, Jamie