With the boys back to school and Ella's preschool program not yet started, she's been coming to church with me in the mornings this week. She's been good and quiet and still. Except this morning, she inadvertently bumped me in the nose and immediately sang out "Sorry" before she could check herself.

I usually favor the "long reading" when given a choice, but this morning I was struggling to hold Ella along with her Build-A-Bear bunny and Thomas the Tank Engine blanket. But the lead-in to his sermon depended on the long reading and, besides, the length of the Gospel reading off-set the brief, three verses from Romans.

On Sunday, the lector had bobbled pronouncing "Philemon" so much that she didn't recover in time to pronounce "Onesimus" correctly either. So it was very pleasant to hear the priest properly pronounce ten or so "tricky" names. And what I was really grateful for was that, of those listed before the Exile, I knew pretty much something about them and was pretty sure I could find their "stories" in the Scripture. It takes time but, with repetition, some stuff sticks.