Several Gripes

So I have a couple of gripes today. First of all I hate large SUV's. I hate when I am trying to turn and they totally block your view, but even more I hate that they don't fit in regular parking places and when they park next to my car I cannot get in it. Today at Cafe Max I deliberately scooted over in my slot to leave room on the drivers side. When I came out a Ford Expedition was next to me. And parked crooked in the spot to boot!! Fortunately they had running boards or I would have probably had to put a dent in their car to get in mine.

Secondly, when you bring children to the Social Security Administration where there is a two hour wait, why wouldn't you bring something to entertain them with?? I understand that you might need to bring them with you as you cannot find childcare, but to bring them with nothing to do just sets them up to be fussy. Then when you walk in and get your number and it is 303 and when you sit down and hear them call 247 you know you are going to have a long wait ahead!! I asked the guy that waited on me if there was a better time a day to come then the afternoon and he said not really, that it is particularly bad right now because of tax season.

A good thing was Ladies Bible class was really good on the book of Ezra. I don't know that I knew that much about him before today. Just contemplating God's mercy and grace in letting the Israelites return from captivity to rebuild the temple was good for me. Listen to this prayer that Ezra prays in Ezra 9:
"My dear God, I'm so totally ashamed, I can't bear to face you. O my God—our iniquities are piled up so high that we can't see out; our guilt touches the skies. We've been stuck in a muck of guilt since the time of our ancestors until right now; we and our kings and priests, because of our sins, have been turned over to foreign kings, to killing, to captivity, to looting, and to public shame—just as you see us now. Now for a brief time God, our God, has allowed us, this battered band, to get a firm foothold in his holy place so that our God may brighten our eyes and lighten our burdens as we serve out this hard sentence. We were slaves; yet even as slaves, our God didn't abandon us. He has put us in the good graces of the kings of Persia and given us the heart to build The Temple of our God, restore its ruins, and construct a defensive wall in Judah and Jerusalem. And now, our God, after all this what can we say for ourselves? For we have thrown your commands to the wind, the commands you gave us through your servants the prophets. They told us, 'The land you're taking over is a polluted land, polluted with the obscene vulgarities of the people who live there; they've filled it with their moral rot from one end to the other. Whatever you do, don't give your daughters in marriage to their sons nor marry your sons to their daughters. Don't cultivate their good opinion; don't make over them and get them to like you so you can make a lot of money and build up a tidy estate to hand down to your children. And now this, on top of all we've already suffered because of our evil ways and accumulated guilt, even though you, dear God, punished us far less than we deserved and even went ahead and gave us this present escape. Yet here we are, at it again, breaking your commandments by intermarrying with the people who practice all these obscenities! Are you angry to the point of wiping us out completely, without even a few stragglers, with no way out at all? You are the righteous God of Israel. We are, right now, a small band of escapees. Look at us, openly standing here, guilty before you. No one can last long like this."


What if I could be that confessional and repentant with my own sins? I remember a few years ago there was such a blitz about the prayer of Jabez. Perhaps it is time to promote the prayer of Ezra?