My Church for the Last 22 Years

I have been a member of Covenant Life Church in Gaithers-burg, Maryland, for the past 22 years. There I have learned to love, give to, and serve God more consistently and joyfully. I have been connected with a network of friends that I will always thank God for. Also, I have learned to love the Bible as the Word of God and to value it far above my own experience.

Last Sunday I was working on the set-up crew, moving furniture in church classrooms to switch between their different uses during the week. I saw Bill Melrose serving in the children's ministry and I remembered meeting him about 15 years ago. He has consistently and diligently served as a volunteer for so many tasks behind the scenes at church. He has several children who have grown up serving along side him. I have seen him reach out to unpopular kids at church and seek to encourage them. He does what he does because he loves God and others, not because he wants power, position, or something for himself.

Our church is filled with people like Bill Melrose!

Why I write this blog

Why am I motivated to write this blog? I see beauty and I want to draw attention to it. C.S. Lewis expresses it better than I can in his book Reflections on the Psalms:

“...all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise... lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside...I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment.”

There is so much pleasure and beauty in God and in what He does, I am motivated to say something about it!

Those of you who know me will laugh when I say that I am NOT a man of few words. I will work at being brief, though, and I hope some of you will find encouragement and real pleasure in God through these attempts of mine to express what God has let me see. MY EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY refers to the glimpses I have seen of the beauty of God's work, mostly in the hearts and lives of people I know.

If anyone is interested, you can see my previous Xanga site that goes back to 2004. About half of what I wrote in that blog was about the band Anapra, which just stopped performing a few weeks ago. I helped the band with all kinds of non-artistic tasks for the last few years. It was a big part of my life and the guys will remain my friends.

My life is in a transition right now so it seems right to end the old blog and start this new one. I have been applying for jobs lately and I am scheduled to have an interview in Seattle this summer. I may end up moving across the country and start over in a whole new job, church, group of friends, and life.