Red letter doesn't quite cover it

Some days are red letter days. Some days are bold print. Some days are both, and then some. This would be one of those. Let me see if I can list the things that are going on:

- My company was bought by HP, causing the stock to jump 4 dollars [to $14], my options to more than double, and all the salary I'd been diverting to stock to nearly double. My job is secure, and I've been pulled into some high profile projects of late

- I'm leaving for a 10-day vacation, perfectly timed for a company-acquisition that I knew nothing about. I successfully handed off my work-in-progress, and I'm all packed.

- I had an amazing Lord's day that I have more than enough to blog about. Amazingly it happened to be on the hand of God in the backgrounds of our lives, from the book of Ruth. Amazing how God keeps doing that to me week after week, bringing things that have been on my mind the entire week.

- And that's not the half of it. Maybe I'll that part more fully into words eventually.

Except for a phone call that I must make, a hair cut, pants I have to buy, and a trip to the airport.... I'm finally ready for the trip. I'll, naturally, have my computer sewn to my hip much of the time, but I will hopefully be doing a lot and taking a lot of pictures. Pray for me; there have been a lot of plane crashes, flights turned back, and emergency landings in Brazil over the last month. As Stonewall put it, I am as safe on an airplane as I am in bed. I will be online a bit during my trip, and posting notes to my blog when I can.

To abbreviate my notes from the Lord's day, Savador Gomez was in town from the Dominican, having come up for a ladies' conference in the past week. He gave a report on the work at IBSJ in the Sunday school, focusing on their Christian school and Radio Eternidad ministry.

His morning message was a semi-evangelistic one, focusing on the doctrinal tuple of conversion, sanctification, and glorification. His central message, oft repeated, was that God wants us to change. It's why He performed the heart transplant, removing the heart of stone; it's why He implants the power of the Spirit to steadily purify us; it's why He will purge the very presence of sin from us at last.

The evening message was drawn from the book of Ruth; a sort of followup/review of what had been addressed to the ladies earlier in the week. Recent events have driven home to me the gist of the message, that God's Sovereign hand is always at work, though we may not perceive it until a long time afterwards. Despite our foolish plans [as Naomi's in chapter 3], He works out what we will soon readily acknowledge to be what was toward out highest good, both in this world and the world to come.

There's so much more, but it's 11:30, I've got a crazy amount of energy, and I need to wind down if I'm to have any hope of getting a reasonable amount of sleep tonight.