For whatever it's worth

^{Matthew 24: 6 - 14}

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Double digits

Today makes ten days since my last cup of coffee. Don't be too impressed; I'm drinking tea to avoid the worst of the withdrawal. Still, I've gone from 4-5 cups of coffee a day to 5-6 cups of tea. Considering coffee has double the caffeine of black tea, I'm pretty happy with that at this point.

I really don't miss it as much as I thought I would. It catches me off guard sometimes, when I catch a stray whiff in public. Mostly, though, I'm doing pretty well. I put away the coffee maker and got out the iced tea maker, and I'm doing hot tea in the morning so there really hasn't been any culture shock. I found a really good spicy pear black tea at a place a few blocks from my church. It's a little pricey, but as one of my friends pointed out, it's probably pretty hard to grow spicy pears. ;-P