Not being late today made me realize how much I missed last week.¹ A tamed version of "Shout to the Lord" is still in my head. I was the only one with my eyes open, who needed them open. During the announcements, I continued to read a pamphlet I'd picked up from the back table answering "Which Bible?" It's a pitch for the ESV, and a pretty lame one because I recognized immediately the cut & paste job from esv.org - this page with HCSB omitted and this page of endorsements, reordered with "favorites" near the top (R.C. Sproul heads it up).

My attention returned to the address when the director of the children's program got up. She explained the "process" of meaningful crafts and coloring sheets:

"The coloring hangs on the fridge using the magnet your child made that first week ..."

Oops.

"Then it goes into the folder."

She said that the children's program is different this year because they need two adults in the child care rooms at all times. So CBS participants, like me, will be volunteered up to twice a term. Somehow they have it worked out so I won't miss any of my program but I think that involves me arriving early and leaving late. I just might not.

I keep forgetting how little I have in common with these ladies theologically. I was reminded with a jolt when one of the questions asked why Paul refers to Timothy as "God's fellow worker" but to his other companions as "my fellow worker" (e.g., Romans 16:3, Philippians 2:25, Philemon 1,24). The answer was that Paul's companions truly followed Paul, not God - these latter weren't (yet?) genuine believers.² Appeal was made to 1 Cor. 1:12! But Timothy was a believer, even before he met Paul.

Then again, it could just be an insignificant difference that's been blown out of proportion by a verbal plenary mindset.

The talk after our bookwork mentioned the devil alot. Alot. The lecturer's delivery had the cadence of a sermon. That was fine. I took a better look at the sanctuary, spending more time in it this week. I expected the architecture to imitate or show dependence upon Presbyterian forms but not in this case anyway. There's a raised platform or stage with chairs for the choir. But there's space behind that and a curtain ... which hides the baptistry? It just seems a throwback to "mystery" that I supposed all Protestants were leery of. Maybe they're just leery of "the other guy's," and theirs is alright because they know it/understand it.

Eh, I'm getting tired. Just one more thing: the director of the children's program came up again and told us that the children created paper arks and learned about Noah.

"But their arks don't have any animals because they ate them for snack, animal crackers."

And I thought to myself, "That's in the Bible, too!"

When I walked in to pick Ella up, they were all gathered around a laptop looking at this Elfred Lee drawing. And when we got to the car, Ella told me that she held "the Bible" above her head. Sounds like they had a book parade or something. She mentioned alot of water flowing all around.

Maybe volunteering in the child care program once or twice wouldn't be a bad idea.

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¹ When I went the opposite direction first to pay for the book for a study I'm not going to do.

² I think Philippians 4:3 blows that idea out of the water because "my fellow workers' ... names are in the book of life." Not to mention Romans 16:21 in which Timothy is merely called "my fellow worker" by Paul.