Still in flux--updates

After a month and a half in Virginia, we finally found a house. We close a week from today.

We had an offer and tentative agreement on one several weeks ago, but the sellers declined to make some small repairs that we requested, so we walked. Someone forgot to tell them it is a buyer's market. For rejecting our request to make repairs that would likely cost less than one of their mortgage payments, they lost the sale, and in the current housing economy the house could stay on the market for months. I think they interpreted our offer to close in two weeks (the house is empty) to mean that we were desperate to move in and would not walk.

Although staying longer in our month-to-month furnished townhouse was both annoying and expensive, we are much happier with the house that we found. The sellers of this house (it is also empty—almost every house we saw was empty because people are not selling in this market unless they are relocated) were very accommodating in agreeing to make the modest repairs resulting from the inspection.

I'll be a relatively close neighbor to one of my favorite Christian bloggers, Tom Gilson.

We are enjoying our new-old church—the one we attended before moving to New Hampshire in early 2002. However, we have not rejoined as of yet. The church is very small (about 40 people in the pews) and is searching for a pastor. I am waiting to see who they hire—although I am not at all certain that's the right thing to do.

Yesterday the interim pastor told a story of a friend of his in the construction business. This friend, it seems, likes to share the gospel on construction sites. After he does so, he has to go somewhere private, where he weeps. The cause of his weeping? He can't believe that God would use him as a messenger. That was a convicting message for me. I understand, intellectually, that we preach the gospel because we are commanded to and also because it is an unspeakable privilege. But, unlike this man, I never feel as if it is a privilege. I always feel more like it is an intellectual challenge. I would really like to feel the weight of what I am doing emotionally.