My take

Who do you want?

Barabbas!

(24 Hour Party People)

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Happy birthday, yesterday, to me. I watched Liverpool torch Leverkusen. Guy Fawkes fireworks exploded all game long. People like that sort of thing, you know?

My mother was unwell but still brought me a cake.

The weather was how I prefer it. At night, I put on I Know Where I’m Going! for more of the same. The boys wouldn’t let me finish it.

Gains and losses of our church

After a three-month hiatus, Karin & I have returned to our adult Sunday school class. Our attendance lapsed when Samuel was born, and, each week, we just kept on sleeping in through the Sunday school hour.

But now it’s good to be back. The current text is John Stott’s 1 & 2 Thessalonians: Living in the End Times. (The link is for a new edition that will be released this summer; Stott is the sole author of the edition we’re using.) It’s amazing how insightful the discussion is when we try to answer Stott’s study questions.

The class meets in a new room, around a stylish, curvy table. No, it isn’t quite like the table in the classic scene in 24 Hour Party People. The whole church is being frugally rearranged. Its basement rooms will soon be rented out to a fostering agency. The agency will pay less rent than it did for its downtown offices, and the church will recover a significant proportion of its maintenance costs. Everyone will win.

The church has another connection to fostering. It hosts a “foster closet,” in which donations of clothes, books, and other household items are collected for foster parents.

We attended our small group meeting tonight and heard some bad news: the church’s garage had been broken into. Nothing of value was stolen, but a lock was snapped off. Apparently, our church has been robbed for several years. It used to own a couple of vans which, from time to time, would be vandalized. Parts would be stolen, probably for resale in Chicago, and gas would be siphoned off. That’s the disadvantage of being located in such a picturesquely isolated part of town.

Thirty-four

No longer on the caveman diet, I regained 10 lbs.

Also, I turned thirty-four. For my birthday, I and a few others watched 24 Hour Party People. Now Martin goes around singing Joy Division songs (just the bass-lines). And the last two days, in the car, he’s asked me to play songs by the Happy Mondays.

What I’ve been listening to, over and over, is the first minute of this.

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World Cup qualifier, this p.m.: Ecuador vs. Uruguay, in Quito. Second-place vs. first-place. I’ll be in the tutoring office. Pray for my pupils to stay at home in bed, what with the gloomy weather, so that I can watch the game. And pray for Ecuador to win.