Saturday, November 8, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
This I know
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.
Great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
When I walk much, which I did yesterday, after a little while my upper back begins to ache. Soon I find myself wandering “drunkenly” across the sidewalk, moving forward but not exactly straight ahead.
Generation after generation praises your works
and proclaims your might.
They speak of the splendor of your glorious majesty
and tell of your wondrous works.
But when we’re with Miles and Jasper their next-generation energy kind of pours out into us. Because Andi had a faculty seminar at school (or thought she did) I got to be chaperone on the boys’ field trip to Austin Nature & Science Center, twenty minutes down the road from our apartment.
We saw a giant dinosaur tooth excavated just a mile from the center, constellations in their planetarium, beautiful black beetles captured by girls in Jaspers’ first grade class. The beetles roamed around on their hands for thirty minutes or so, tickling them a little,  before the girls let them go again into the dead tree trunks where they first found them. A bobcat slept undisturbed in its nest. But the best thing was an empty Eastern Hognose snake terrarium. Which didn’t stay empty for long.
Miles’ noticed it first.
“Look, Grandpa, the dirt is moving.” It was indeed. Then gradually out of the earth the snake’s snout began to appear, and then its head, and then very slowly its whole 30-inch body slid out of the dirt and into the air. We couldn’t help but give that snake some applause. Who wouldn’t clap for an entrance like that?
After lunch, which included chocolate hummus, we drove home listening to Prince Caspian – Book Three of the Chronicles of Narnia. Andi’s seminar was cancelled, so she spent the morning with Margaret – they worked together in her classroom and then at their house.
Miles and Jasper feel at home in our apartment; we’ve had many sleepovers during our five years in Austin. Our books and toys might seem new to them because it’s been awhile, but they know what to look for. We played Sorry, rummy, Story cubes and Yahtzee, along with a cool Advent/Christmas stacking game from last year’s Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar (which is more amazing every year, by the way). They described in detail and then took turns creating ice cream, cookie, marshmallow and chocolate chip cones.
At the end of the afternoon we pulled their fishing rods off the hooks in my closet, found the mostly empty tackle box and walked up to the swimming pool. (The temperature in Austin yesterday was a sunny 86 degrees.) Ashley got us a couple of cold waters from the manager’s office.
The boys took off their shoes and socks and then showed off their improving casting skills. A big red bobber came off and flew over the outer wall, but not all the way into the street. We retrieved it eventually.
Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so,
Little ones to him belong
They are weak but He is strong.
After visiting with a friend nearby Andi drove in to pick them up. After everyone had gone and I’d retrieved the bobber from the grass outside, along with a black plastic worm and cool pink furry jig from the pool with our “grabber,” I talked awhile with Milo, a neighbor who was working outside and getting a suntan at the same time. As he drove in earlier Milo saw us playing at the pool.
“My heart was warmed,” he said, and smiled.
Now to him who can strengthen you,
according to my Gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ,
according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages
but now manifested through the prophetic writings and,
according to the command of the eternal God,
made known to all nations to bring about the obedience of faith,
to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ
be glory forever and ever. Amen.
(Romans 16, Psalm 145, 2 Corinthians 8, Luke 16)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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