{"id":7293,"date":"2011-03-22T01:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T01:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7293"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:36:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:36:25","slug":"day-128-nested-babushka-throw-and-open-house-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7293","title":{"rendered":"Day 128 – Nested Babushka (Throw) and Open House Disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The best boss I ever worked for, Pastor Mark, brought this back for me from his trip to Russia years ago.\u00a0 (No offense intended to current or other past bosses!)\u00a0 The kids always thought these things\u00a0were toys … and you can’t blame them.\u00a0 And over the years, several pieces have been lost.\u00a0 Dats (age 9) feels personally responsible for permanently separating the nesters by dropping one down a furnace vent.\u00a0 Oh well, now I’m tossing all of it, so he need not feel guilty about it any longer. In other news… Yesterday was our Open House.\u00a0 We spent all of our spring break week getting the house ready to go. And nobody showed up. Not one. But it wasn’t a complete loss – I got a nap.\u00a0 And there’s nothing better than a Sunday afternoon nap. (Except maybe selling your house.) Some of the small group guys had come over after church to pray for the quick sale of our house, but it wasn’t to be.\u00a0 Not yet. To say that Melissa was bummed out would be an understatement.\u00a0 In the shock of ZERO people showing up, she began to (briefly) question the validity of our call to Haiti. But I look at it this way:\u00a0 If you are on the right path, it doesn’t guarantee that everything is going to fall into place quickly and easily and\u00a0in your time frame.\u00a0 What comes to my mind is all the trouble the Apostle Paul encountered trying to follow God’s call.\u00a0 He had one of the clearest calls in all of church history and yet he experienced one after another of the\u00a0things none of us would want to go through:\u00a0 “23 I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24<\/strong><\/sup> Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25<\/strong><\/sup> Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26<\/strong><\/sup> I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27<\/strong><\/sup> I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.” (2 Cor 11) All of this while walking in the path God ordained for him! So I’m not going to get too bent out of shape if my house doesn’t immediately sell the first time we open the doors.\u00a0 It could be worse, right? And what was Paul’s conclusion after relating all this hardship?\u00a0 “If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best boss I ever worked for, Pastor Mark, brought this back for me from his trip to Russia years ago.\u00a0 (No offense intended to current or other past bosses!)\u00a0 The kids always thought these things\u00a0were toys … and you can’t blame them.\u00a0 And over the years, several pieces have been lost.\u00a0 Dats (age 9) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7295,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7293\/revisions\/7295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}