And most of the ex-pats were eating sushi just outside the American consulate yesterday afternoon.

The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty; yet the sum of them is but labor and sorrow, for they pass away quickly and we are gone. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. Psalm 90:10,12

I read in a book that a man named Christ who went about doing good. It is very disconcerting to me that I am so easily satisfied with merely going about. –Toyohiko Kagawa

I pretty much have to restart all of my lesson plans every afternoon walking home with a spinning head after midday meal. Which is a good thing; hopefully it means I was listening carefully to my student objectives, SWBATs. And man oh man, they have a long list… very few of these guys studied to be teachers; they are all veterinarians or pharmacists or engineers teaching in their third or fourth language to students in their third or fourth language with no textbooks to pass a very rigorous international test while producing literal volumes of detailed curriculum maps and lesson plans.

No hay problema.

  

Erbil is full of equally dedicated and sacrificial people. The streets are lined with NGOs. And dire needs form a long endless line as well, with dark clouds threatening uncertainty in every headline.

Oh, deep in my heart,
I do believe
We shall overcome, some day.

So here we go. Another day. And after a quiet walk with His Father before the clutter started clanging for His attention, He went about doing good.

He who understands the big picture. He, full of the Holy Spirit, He declared that Elijah and Elisha did not feed all the widows or heal all of the lepers. But this same Christ paused in the midst of the madding crowd and called for the bleeding woman.

Teach me to number my days and apply my heart to wisdom, O LORD God.

Deliver us from ourselves, O Lord, and bring us home to life with You.