Too Much Formula

Besides a good Word and time with friends, I brought something else home from the women's retreat.  No not the candle, because I totally forgot mine on the table Friday night...nope I think a cold has come home with me and it is not welcomed here.  After a vigorous clean out of the guest bedroom yesterday, I lost all energy, began to feel the scratchy throat and a little bit of a runny nose.  So to work on stopping it in its tracks and I hope my early defense will do the work.

I am up early this morning and started working on Luke homework since I am a tad behind this week.  A verse totally jumped off the page and landed right in the good old heart, "At this time a message from God came to John, son of Zechariah, who was living in the wilderness."  There seems to be so many in my circle of friends, including me, who are 'at this time' in the wilderness.  Years ago our Sunday School class had a teacher that included the wilderness in her every lesson because she seemed to think that is where she lived, all the time, in the wilderness.  Each lesson had sufficient unto itself lots and lots of sadness and spiritual stiff upper lipping but no victory, no this is what we learn from this time...because she was there all the time in the wilderness of her mind and had nothing to contrast a life of living in spite of circumstances, looking forward in victory.  Her view seemed to be usually the blast from the past view.  Right now I am fighting to find why wilderness, why now?  But this morning...A message from God to John, son of Zechariah....  God knows who we are, what we have come from family-wise, and He knows where we are living.  Such great hope!  It seems to me, not a biblical scholar, that when John came out of the wilderness to preach, he brought some of his wilderness with him, mainly his clothes and choice of food, but when God had a word for him, a message, John left the wilderness and went from place to place on both sides of the Jordan preaching that people should be baptized to show they had repented of their sins and turned to God.

Monday, I decided to tackle the ol' to be read pile of books.  Before leaving for the month away in Asheville, I had started a book by an author of whom I have read before.  Her earlier books were interesting with a good thematic thread, but the past few books have been more formula....more formula than John Grisham or Nicholas Sparks.  Whatever story came first since I have read out of order the formula is this, four friends whose friendship is formed at college during the 60's.  One has a secret, one seems to have it all together, one is an 'easy' girl and the other one is trying to find and make a way through the tremendous weight of naivety.  They go through college together, stand with one another when there is a family crisis, in all the books I've read it is a distant mother and a loving father who divorce and it is the mother's fault the marriage has fallen apart, and all other life disruptions.  They scatter to the four winds after college promising each other they will stay in contact.  They don't and with little contact only to be brought back together by a reunion or a desperate situation. As I read yesterday afternoon all the above came to me because it seemed so familiar....I put the book down, there is too many other books of interest to read. Another book donated to KCM or Goodwill.