I Guess It's All About Love

Last Friday after Beth got off work we headed down to Iowa for a wedding. My maternal grandmother rode with us. I got some good family stories out of her. She had been up in the Twin Cities staying with a friend the past week. The boys have been sick all week. They finally got some rest in the car.

Saturday morning we went into the nursing home to see my paternal grandmother. She had a stroke last year. It was good to see a big smile on her face when we showed up, but it's very hard to see her unable to respond to much the rest of the time. We sat in the lounge for a while. Another lady came and played the piano for a while. Nils danced to it for a while. A few other people stopped to watch. Grandma did kiss my cheek when I hugged her goodbye.

The wedding for was one of the camp staff kids (I guess he's not a kid anymore). He was marrying a girl from Albert City. It was good to see so many friends we hadn't seen in a while (including other camp staff who are in Texas now).

We were planning on going down to Des Moines for some family birthdays, but found out the party wasn't until later in the afternoon on Sunday which wasn't going to work as well for getting home at a reasonable hour. So, we ended up going to P-Cov for church and joining the 20-40 somethings group for lunch at Pizza Ranch. I know we've only been gone for 2 years now, but it still feels like "home" in many ways. Some churches have that feel, others don't. It's a good feel.

Pastor Karl preached on love (there, Jane, you can let him know he made the blog). Sorry, Karl, I'm not remembering most of it. Anders didn't want to go to children's church so he was on my lap for most of the sermon. He noticed the lenten cross up front. And we're called to love like Jesus loved. But we can't love others unless we love ourselves ("love your neighbor as yourself"). I don't think we can even forgive others unless we can fogive ourselves as well ( forgiveness is a part of love in God's example). And, I do remember Karl saying, that we can only love others because God first loves us. If we're not doing things out of love, then we might as well forget doing them because they don't matter (to sum up 1 Corinthians 13). And one final quick reminder: this kind of love isn't a feeling (no kind of love actually is). "Love is a verb" (DC Talk). So do it.