Church
The church service was really good today as we learned about Ephesians 2:7

that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus

One verse, but totally packed full of detail. The thing that struck me is that God is doing those things toward us, we are the recipients of His kindness if we are redeemed by His son Christ. Heaven is not described in terms of Man’s experience but more in God’s actions. Sometimes we think about what we’ll be doing rather than what we should be thinking, “What will God be doing?” In this verse it is clear that God will be showing kindness to us eternally! If you can conceive of 10,000 years think of that as being nothing in the scope of infinity, and all of that time our minds will be amazed (blown away, astonished, boggled, fascinated, overwhelmed, etc.) by His kindness towards us as He reveals His love. What is even more amazing is that the amazing nature of His revelation of character will be yet more amazing even after a trillion years [if the time-space continuum can be forced on the heavenlies].

All of this amazing love because of Christ’s work on the cross. Wow!

The Second Party
The first party happened last night at the Kaes’ house for Kailey and Trystan and this afternoon we converged for a second party and had yet another great time. The best fellowship to be had in Colorado. Craig Kaes works on Jabber’s server side software and he and I have had some really neat conversations about programming but also about other things in life. It is neat to have a programming friend who likes to talk about programming but also loves so many other things.

Craig and Brian White (also there at the party with his wonderful wife and cute infant) were extolling the wonders of freshly roasted coffee. Not just recently (some coffee places), within the last year (Starbuck’s) or within the last millennia (Folger’s) but within the last 48 hours. Apparently roasted coffee loses its freshness after the first three days. Craig made me a fresh roasted, freshly ‘everythinged’ cappuccino, which was great. He explained the whole process which was pretty fascinating and I learned a lot about things and some things were very intuitive to me like the difference between a double and single shot espresso ‘filters’ [since I don’t know what they’re really called] and why some of the filters designs leant themselves to poor espressos.

Fireworks
We went to see the fireworks at Belleview Park and that was fun. I used to not enjoy fireworks so much about since I was a teenager. I’m not entirely sure why, but they lost their excitement. However, this year proved to be an wonderful experience as Abby added a fresh excitement to the old ‘blow-up and bright’ of fireworks. She kept saying, “Again” and, “Loud” and clapping as the ‘bombs burst in mid-air. At the end she said, “Good job.” I love being her dad. I know I’ve said that before but she’s a wonderful treat.

I kept thinking as the beautiful display went off before our upward-facing eyes that there were real people who saw real bombs and faught in real wars losing real friends who had real families back home. I’m blessed to live in this country and I hope and pray that our soldiers in Iraq come home quickly.

May your year between July fifth until next July 4th be blessed with the blessings I had today!