Advent Re-Post

Advent is here! And followers of my blog may already be aware of the fact that I have a fun habit of having all kinds of crazy things happen to me during the Advent season. I am, apparently, a kind of magnet for these sorts of things.

Well, so far this Advent has yet to present anything too crazy... But, there are still 3 weeks to go. In the meantime, I thought I would provide you all with links to my favorite Advent-ures from years gone by: And That's When I Set Myself On Fire (Part 1) & And That's When I Set Myself On Fire (Part 2).

Enjoy, my friends!!

The Great Flood of 2008... in Rhyme

'Twas the week before Christmas,
and in Macomb, Illinois,
not a person was driving -
neither a girl, nor a boy.
The ice storm had come,
and much power was down.
The ice coated EVERYTHING
in this Midwestern town.
The Fourth Sunday of Advent
was only 2 days away,
and the pastor at First Pres
found she needed to pray.
A parishioner called
and needed some help.
"The church building's flooded,"
he said with a yelp!
The ice, it would seem,
had coated the church,
clogging all of the drain spouts,
forcing the water to search
for the easiest path
to escape from the roof.
So the water flowed inside,
where things aren't so rustproof.
The pastor's left eye, well,
it started to twitch;
she feared driving to church
she'd end up in a ditch.
But she managed to get there
with the help of a friend
(who's own church then flooded
before the month's end)!

It had flooded the Chapel's
newly carpeted floor,
and it dripped from the speakers
and was soaked up by the door!
It flooded the pastor's old office -
and how!
She was ever so thankful
to not be in there now!
The water flowed into
the Conference Room,
and the pastor wondered when
the adult class could resume.
Down in the basement
the water dripped, too,
causing ceilings to crash
and tiles to unglue.
They gathered up waste cans
from each nook and cranny -
the number of leaks
and the drips was uncanny!
And up on the roof
they caused quite a clatter;
as they chipped at the ice,
my teeth started to chatter.
The work to clean up
went on through the night,
as the pastor, sexton, and others
worked with all of their might.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent -
it came and it went,
for the ice storm made it too hard
to attend any event.
But the Christmas Eve service
went according to plan,
and we all celebrated the birth
of the Son of Man.

I Need a Laugh... Don't You?

This has turned out to be quite the interesting Advent and Christmas Season... There will be a blog posting after Christmas with all of the crazy, wacky details. I may not have set myself on fire this year (at least not yet), but this is definitely one for the record books.

In the meantime, I need a good laugh. So... Enjoy!

Advent Musings

So, clearly I have not been able to blog in a while... It has been a bit crazy these last several weeks, so I appreciate any and all prayers that are being aimed in my general direction.

It seems that there is at least one thing that happens every Advent that is, well... unexpected. All you have to do is take a brief stroll down memory lane and read some of my blog entries from last year to see what I mean. While nothing has come crashing down so far, and I have (to this point) been able to avoid setting myself on fire again, there have been a few moments during this Advent season when I have found myself asking, "Really? This is what is going to happen this Sunday?" Since there is still one Sunday left in this Advent season, I will delay in writing about those adventures... at least for today. We'll see what this Sunday brings...

Oh -- if you haven't checked out the joy that is Wordle.net, you really need to wander over to see it! Check out this nifty creation (based on the stroll down memory lane that I mentioned above...)!