Day 6

I should qualify "woke up late" for yesterday.  I still got up at 6:00, saved by the internal alarm.  So I still made it to the gym, got my workout on, and all.  I found a new audio Spanish series that looks like it will work for me, even though the woman doing the English part has a very strong British accent (and uses phrases like "hail-car" and "white coffee").  Also, some of the Spanish speakers are Castilian, so there's a lot of "thinco" and "tardeth."  Makes me cringe, but at least it's a fully audio course.

This gave me a late start this morning, thought I'd share it:

Freedom in love,
     oh my God, what a phrase!
It's like drowning alive
     in a pool of Your grace,
Or an unconsumed heart
     before you ablaze;
Your love, it's a mystery.
'Cause You send down Your Son,
     though You knew He would die,
For with that one death,
     we were all made alive--
It just doesn't make sense
     to my feeble mind,
But Your love is a mystery.

Hopefully there's more to that, but I don't have time this morning to pull out the guitar and see what it will sound like.

Anyway...today's prayer country is China, the country with probably the worst reputation for persecution.  Around 90% of believers there worship in illegal unregistered churches.  While some are known to officials and ignored, every one of these churches is at risk of having its leaders arrested and its membership forcibly disbanded.  One woman who was working with a magazine for a house church movement was finally released last December after being imprisoned since April 2001.  This is a country that desperately needs our prayers for its believers.