Boom!

When you open the Bible, you never know.

I am dead serious.

You never know when it's going to reach out and grab you by the heart and shake your soul.

For me, it really doesn't matter why I wound up opening the it, or whether I do it in a modern translation or ancient - in print or on a screen. There are times when I am just slayed by the power of the Story, of the "rightness" of the way Jesus acts, of the reaction of those who rejected Him, and of those who didn't.

For example -

He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, "Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me,

and far more than me--God who sent me."

The picture I get of this is Jesus taking a little boy and placing him on His lap. The GK word indicates an embrace in the crook of the arm. I can see the little boy snuggling closer, Jesus looking down and smiling, maybe taking his other hand and tousling the boy's hair. People who were listening to Jesus teach but kind of hanging back, move closer. Holding the boy seems to make Him less of a threat to the status quo.


Then He speaks, and they realize that Jesus would turn their world upside down. He's changing reality. What mattered before, doesn't. What didn't, does.

But look back with me.

Years later, Jesus has been killed and has risen again. Christianity is spreading. The world is changing.

And someone in Capernaum,

now a young man, takes his little boy into his lap -


and suddenly

he remembers the day 
when 
he was held 
in God's arms.

WOW! 

One day, we all will know how that feels. Until then, we'll have to love one another.


18 My dear children, let's not just talk about love; let's practice real love. 19 This is the only way we'll know we're living truly, living in God's reality.
1 John 3:18-19 (MSG)

That's Change I Do Believe In

From Drop Box

When All Seems Wrong

Many years ago, G.K. Chesterson was asked to write an essay on what was wrong with the world. Here is his succinct but deadly accurate reply.

Dear Sirs,

I am.

Sincerely yours,
G. K. Chesterton

The picture above illustrates all of what is right with the world. Over 2000 years have passed since Jesus' ministry on this earth ended in what almost everyone who witnessed its end saw as a brutal, awful bloody failure.

And yet, through what man intended for evil, God brought not just a temporary or band-aid fix. No, God brought forth reconciliation between a race stained forever with sin and His holy and righteous nature.

Isn't the cross beautiful?

Just awesome

I've loved the song for a long time, but I hadn't seen the Ruth Bell Graham tribute version until tonight. Truly a fitting song for a life well lived.

Give me Jesus.

Give Me Jesus

Tim Keller in The Reason for God:

The God of Jesus and the prophets...saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance - he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace, we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us...In Jesus' and the prophets' critique, self-righteous religion is always marked by insensitivity to issues of social justice, while true faith is marked by profound concern for the poor and marginalized...

What is the answer, then, to the very fair and devastating criticisms of the record of the Christian church? The answer is not to abandon the Christian faith, because that would leave us with neither the standards nor the resources to make correction. Instead we should move to a fuller and deeper grasp of what Christianity is.

Push out into the deep. Embrace Jesus.

Who are God's people, really?

5:1-12 When Jesus saw the large crowd, he went up the hill and sat down. His students gathered around him, and he began teaching them. This is what he said:

"The spiritually humble are God's people, for they are citizens of his new order.
"They who are deeply concerned are God's people, for they will see their ideas become reality.
"They who are gentle are his people, for they will be his partners across the land.
"They who have an unsatisfied appetite for the right are God's people, for they will be given plenty to chew on.
"The generous are God's people, for they will be treated generously.
"Those whose motives are pure are God's people, for they will have spiritual insight.
"Men of peace and good will are God's people, for they will be known throughout the land as his children.
"Those who have endured much for what's right are God's people; they are citizens of his new order.
"You all are God's people when others call you names, and harass you and tell all kinds of false tales on you just because you follow me. Be cheerful and good-humored, because your spiritual advantage is great. For that's the way they treated men of conscience in the past.

Clarence Jordan, Cotton Patch Gospels

We've been looking at the "red letters" for the last few weeks at New Hope, and I think Clarence Jordan would approve. He was famous for writing about "Jesus' Doings' and Sayings'"

I was wondering a little while ago about the effect on a person who knew nothing about Christianity, Jesus, or the church if you were to give them this as a guideline as to what a person who wanted to relate rightly to God would find themselves doing.

Would they turn out as the typical person who joins the church does?

Most Challenging Quote Today

If we are to preach Christ crucified, we must also preach a Christ that opponents would see as worthy of crucifixion.

Thank God

It's Thanksgiving week here, and on a cold afternoon, I was reading Leviticus and trying to keep warm. We've been looking at this very Jewish book for the last month in our Wednesday night Bible study small group. Each week, I've tried to build the bridges between what we see in the old sacrificial system and today. Some weeks it works well, others not so much.

This week we'll look at the sin offering.

It's hard to get over how bloody their worship was. There's blood everywhere. They throw it, pour it, and in this week's twist, the priest dips his fingers in it and smears it on the "horns" of the altar. Blood... everywhere.

If you're like me, you don't think about blood much. But today I was reading a blog, and a post from a GI about his days in Iraq made me think.

"Everything I have on today is something I wore in Iraq, my boots scuffed and bleached from sand and dirt and hard use, my blood type written in faded black ink on the outside and inside of each heel.
Before leaving Kuwait for the trip into Iraq in February 2005 I took all my Army brown T shirts into the shower trailer next to C for Charlie Companies tents and wrote my last four and blood type on the front of all of them. I was alone, and in the humid air of the trailer, I remember the act feeling rather sad and final.
Later, later, after seeing, working on, and evacing wounded I wrote my blood type on my belt, and later my boots, O POS."

As he contemplated going into harm's way, he prepared by writing his blood type almost everywhere he could think of. Why? Because blood is life. The precious seconds lost in determining what blood type a solider has could be the difference between life and death. So that GI made sure every way he could that no time would be wasted on him.

When I thought about how that must have felt, to be coldly anticipating your being wounded or killed so vividly that you inscribe your blood type everywhere, I am again humbled and thankful to live in a nation that produces such men and women. They prepare for the worst, and then go forward hoping for the best, trusting in their equipment, their training, and their comrades.

As I was thinking about that I realized - John the Baptist looked up one day and saw the One God had chosen to take the place of sacrifice and pay the price. His blood would be poured out for our sins. He cried out:

"Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" John 1:29

And unlike that GI, who prepared but hoped he'd never need any of his notes to be read,

Jesus knew.

He knew that He would bleed and die. For us.

For that, and for the abundant life He's given us, I thank God.

Grace!

David
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http://www.newhopevalp.org/