day.

This morning I was all set to drive down to Franklin where Jennifer is staying to see this neighborhood's little parade they put on for July 4th (even though today is the 3rd). I left the house at 8:30 to make it there by 9, expecting it to start around 9:30 or 10. They block of the neighborhood to traffic after the parade starts. I'm cruising down the interstate when I get a voicemail from Jennifer saying it's starting at 9, "Drive fast." I'm still 20 minutes out and there is no way I'm going to make it, so I abandon my plans, pull off at the Brentwood exit, and go to Publix to get a prescription filled for my mission trip.

I haven't been in a Publix except for once in Jacksonville. There isn't one very close to my house. This Publix in Brentwood is enormous and very clean and all of the employees are extremely friendly and seem happy to be there. It took the pharmacist 25 minutes to fill my prescription and because I hadn't planned a grocery trip, I sat in a chair and read a book I had with me, Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die. And I'm in the first pages reading about Jesus dying to absorb the wrath of God and this paragraph is huge:

Therefore sin is not small, because it is not against a small Sovereign. The seriousness of an insult rises with the dignity of the one insulted. The Creator of the universe is infinitely worthy of respect and admiration and loyalty. Therefore, failure to love him is not trivial--it is treason. It defames God and destroys human happiness. . . .

Let us not trifle with God or trivialize his love. We will never stand in awe of being loved by God until we reckon with the seriousness of our sin and the justice of his wrath against us. But when, by grace, we waken to our unworthiness, then we may look at the suffering and death of Christ and say, "In this love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the [wrath-absorbing] propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).

Wow. The rest of my day was spent doing laundry, cleaning, rearranging, writing, and going to the grocery store. My neighbors are setting off fireworks and Miles is not a fan. Talk about a nervous wreck. Looking forward to tomorrow and Monday.

Happy day,