A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices

In light of what’s happening in America between the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent George Floyd murder, and subsequent protests and riots, I wanted to write about hope.

I hear the word hope used a lot these days, and rightfully so. But where does hope come from? Why do we have hope? What are you hoping for? Where does your hope come from? Karma? Science? Democracy? Politics? Religion? Education? Revolution? Evolution? The good of mankind? Or, maybe you don’t even have any hope. In the absence of hope, there are only feelings.

I have hope. I want to tell you what it is and why I have it. You can disagree with me. You can make fun of me. You can think I’m crazy. But, I have hope. A solid, real, life-changing, factually based, intellectually grounded hope that can be explained. My hope is more than just words. My hope is something that can be lived out, talked about, put into action, and can make a difference.

Hope is a vision for a better future. Here’s my hope and my vision for a better future:

I believe that God is going to do for the entire cosmos what He did for Jesus at Easter.

Resurrection. New Creation. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, I believe God can and will do this for all His creation. What creation needs is neither abandonment nor evolution but rather redemption and renewal; and this is both promised and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This is what the whole world’s waiting for.

God is going to set things right in this world because creation is good and the nature of evil needs to be vanquished by God’s plan of redemption. He’s going to do that through the resurrection of Christ. Because God is going to resurrect this world, so to speak, what we do with our lives now matters. I live my life based on the hope I have for mankind that was revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You can have this hope too.

Something to ink about…

“Resurrection” by Kathleen Crosby

this blog was inspired by N.T. Wright’s book Suprised by Hope.

Centerpiece

 

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.                                                       Luke 12:34 (see also 12:21; 18:22)

Ponder the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure.                                         Proverbs 4:26

And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him.             Hebrews 5:9

Oh Lord my God, in you do I take refuge.                                                                                  Psalm 7:1

Our treasure, our path, our source and our refuge is Christ. The center of it all is Jesus.

Any journey of discipleship that does not have Christ as the goal is narcissistic. In other words, all discipleship is about Jesus and our transformation to be like him. Discipleship is not self-help, it is not a mystical journey of self-discovery, it is not the mere accumulation of facts and knowledge. This is true because Jesus is not one of many facets of our complicated lives. Jesus is not merely a compartment in consciousness. Jesus is everything. He is first. He is all.

Discipleship is the process in which we are confronted with the truth that in order to follow Christ, he has to be our Treasure. If we are to follow Christ, then there is only one Path. Should we choose to follow the Savior, there can be no other Source of life. To follow Jesus means there is only one Refuge when the storms of life rage.

Discipleship is a commitment to one thing. It is a commitment to one way. You must search your heart and ask yourself the question, “Am I willing to let Jesus be the meaning of my life?” If you do not want him to be your treasure, your path, your source and your refuge then the journey you are on is not a journey of discipleship.

⁶⁶ After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.⁶⁷ So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” ⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,⁶⁹ and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”                                                                     John 6:66-69

“Where else could we go?” is the question discipleship asks to each and every person who starts the journey. The answer, for the Christ-follower, is simple: nowhere. Jesus alone has the words of eternal life. We are re-stating the same theme over and over: Jesus is the source and meaning of all life. Unless one is willing to start with this orientation, the journey is already a bust. Right from the Garden of Eden, God has asked just one thing from those he created: find your source and meaning of life in me and me alone. All else is idolatry. All else is eating the forbidden fruit.

This singular call to Christ has a certain lack of appeal in today’s church world. That’s because discipleship is not a self-help guide, it is not leadership training and its purpose is not church growth. While all those things can happen as a byproduct of discipleship, the center of it all has to remain Jesus and nothing else. Discipleship is about one’s treasure, one’s path one’s source of life and one’s refuge. The main impulse of discipleship is this,

We have found the Messiah…him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote.                                                                        John 1:41, 45

Pop(ular) discipleship starts and ends with what it can do for me. Biblical discipleship is centered on Christ. There is no better call to vintage discipleship than the words of, appropriately enough, Jesus himself:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.   Luke 9:23

Sounds very uninviting in many ways, that can’t be denied. It is challenging, uncomfortable and unpopular. Yet, to those who persevere, to those who humbly come to the cross of Christ and cast down their crowns at his feet, there is treasure worth more than gold. To give up life in order to find Life is a beautiful exchange. Jim Elliot’s words are apropos here: he is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

The center of discipleship is to be like Jesus and the end of it is to know Christ. He is our treasure, our path, our source and our refuge. With that perspective, we correctly begin and end our discipleship journey. Then and only then can we say with the Psalmist,

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forever more.                                                                                     Psalm 16:11

Where is your discipleship journey taking you? I hope and pray it is taking you to Jesus.

Something to ink about…

Lord of the …. nap?

Sabbath. American church culture invokes Sabbath as “the Sunday nap.” It seems to be a divine excuse not to have to do anything on Sunday, even church activity. In our fast paced, overly busy world, that is an understandable interpretation of Sabbath. Naps are good, we all need to unplug at some point during the week. But is Sabbath simply a reason to take naps, watch football, have a glass of wine and watch movies? Is that all Sabbath is?

Truly it is more than that; so much more. The common, yet faulty, understanding of Sabbath comes from, as if often the case among Christians, a faulty understanding of the Bible. Bad theology + a brutally paced lifestyle = the Sabbath nap. Let’s dig a little deeper though and see what Sabbath is all about. Don’t worry, I’m a huge fan of naps so I won’t take that away from you.

First, let’s look at the Old Testament, right where it all started in Genesis. I plan to write a separate blog about this matter, but for now I will simply say this: what we interpret as primarily the material creation of the world (Genesis 1-3) is actually the creation of a temple. God was bringing order to the world so that He could “take up residence” in the world. In the Garden, God created a temple for himself as a dwelling place. * (You could excitedly follow the Garden-tabernacle-temple-Jesus as temple-Christian as temple-no temple in Revelation 22 theme for an amazing bible study). Sabbath, in this manner, is when “the house became a home” for God. Sabbath becomes the crowning moment of creation, not because God took a nap and relaxed, but because God established his presence in the world (again, follow the theme of “now I shall be their God and dwell among them” in the Bible). As the temple is sacred space, so Sabbath is sacred time (quoted from NT Wright in The Authority of Scripture). God created his image-bearers (humans, represented in Adam & Eve) to participate in the creator’s enjoyment of the world by “keeping the Sabbath.” God continues to work in the world, as opposed to leaving mankind to his own devices. His image-bearers move the project forward, because, much to our delight, the project is going somewhere!

Skipping ahead to the New Testament (unfortunately passing by Jubilee and so much more), we see that Jesus makes the claim, “I am Lord of the Sabbath.” The project, begun in the Garden/Temple of Genesis 1&2, was coming to its fulfillment. The Great Jubilee is here: a time of freedom and peace not just for Israel, but the whole world. You see, Jesus was the new Temple and in him heaven and earth came together and through his ministry, death and resurrection, he activated the unending Jubilee and fulfilled the idea of Sabbath. For once gain we see that Sabbath is not “rest” in the sense of inactivity or idleness. We see at the very end of the Bible that God’s Garden/Temple project is still going on: vibrant and robust living through celebration and work! Sabbath points to God being at home with his creation and creation being at home with God.

So what about today, what is Sabbath? Sabbath is a celebration that heaven and earth have come together in Jesus Christ. He is our Garden/Temple. Instead of the legalistic rest of the Old Testament, we should creatively celebrate the presence of God in our world as we look forward to Revelation 22. Sabbath compels us to be active and to “redeem the time, for the days are evil.” Through Sabbath, we can reclaim our schedules and be more mindful of doing activity that celebrates God’s just and merciful ways. Through Sabbath, we bring hope and healing to the nations. If you need to find some time in your week to relax – do it! However, don’t do it at the expense of Sabbath. Sabbath is sacred time.not nap time. Sabbath is about being God’s image-bearers to this world; and God knows this world needs his presence.

So can you still take naps on Sunday? For sure. But can you use Sabbath as an excuse to be inactive and idle on Sundays? No, I’m afraid not. The Sabbath principle redeems all our time by making it sacred: seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be given to you. Let Sabbath free you from the nervous compulsion to always need more. What we really need is more of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath.

Something to ink about…

*John Walton’s The Lost World of Adam and Eve and The Lost World of Genesis One are simply a must read by every student of the Bible.

The Point

It’s as if we have almost entirely missed the point.

The Bible is a fascinating collection of books that all tell the same story: God created us in His image and rescued us from the consequences of our disobedience so that He could live with and among us for all of eternity.

Track the story from the Garden, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to the Prophets, to Jesus, to Paul and the Church and it all leads to same thing:

God will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. (see Revelation 21 & 22).

We should altogether stop reading the Bible as a science book. The Bible tells of God’s presence among creation, not the “how-to’s” of creation. We should altogether stop reading the Bible as a list of “do’s and don’ts” as if God is just waiting for us to mess up so He can really do what He wanted to do all along – punish us. The Bible gives commandments (love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself) so that we will know how to make God’s presence (His Kingdom) known on earth. We should altogether stop reading the Bible as a self-help book, written so that individuals can be happy and successful. The Bible belongs to the Church, and should be read in its entirety to understand the story of King Jesus and our part in His Kingdom (which, I would argue, goes much deeper than happiness). We should altogether stop interpreting the Bible as if God had many stories. There is one story: Jesus. The story of the Bible is the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus.

Salvation is about playing our part in God’s story, like we were created to do. “Being saved” means we have been rescued and redeemed so that we actually CAN play our part. We must be “born again” (John 3:3) because accepting Jesus Christ as Savior is very much an act of death and resurrection, on His part and ours. Only those filled with the Spirit of God can play their part in the Kingdom of God. Salvation is about citizenship.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the LORD Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (Philippians 3:20-21)

But we have gone ahead and made salvation about finding religion; instead of finding true meaning and purpose for life  We have turned it into  personal, highly individualized self-help therapy; instead of keeping our eyes on the Cross of Christ.  We have mutated it into some form of escapism (believing, wrongly, that God’s plan all along is to snatch us off the planet and take us far, far away); instead of understanding the God loves this world and plans to live here WITH us (albeit, slightly altered). We have reduced salvation into membership into the coolest church, instead of citizenship in heaven.

The point is that too many Christ-followers today are impotent because they don’t hear the Living and Active Word of God as spoken through the Scriptures, and, they’ve joined a club instead of joining a revolution. Salvation is rescue, not religion. Scripture is the story of Christ as King and Savior, not outdated rules and fables.

I really believe that Christ-followers would find their faith so much more meaningful and potent if they would re-engage the Bible with the right frame of mind, and work out their salvation according to what it’s really meant to be. We are invited to take part in the greatest story ever told – and the story is still happening! Let us embrace a faith that is full of hope and healing for this world. THAT is the faith God wants us to have.

something to ink about…

Gospel Love

The New Testament make something very clear:

if it has flesh and blood, it is not our enemy.

Put another way:

if it is human, we are to fight for it, not against it.

(Ephesians 4:12)

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is expressed through acts of love; not violence, coercion, manipulation or force of any kind. The Gospel, even more outrageously, compels us to love people who may not love us, like us or agree with us. In short, we are to love even our enemies – because our enemy is not flesh and blood. Flesh and blood is what Jesus came to give His life for.

“Love” is so overused it is almost a useless word (almost, not quite). We love our favorite sports team, our favorite ice cream, we love a movie, we love how certain clothes make us look, we love everything. So let’s make the definition of love a little clearer: to love, according to Jesus, is to agree with God that a person has inestimable and unsurpassable worth. It doesn’t mean we throw discernment out the door; it does mean we stop putting ourselves above other people.

Love is how I continue to pray for and serve my city. My city has a lot of things about it that I honestly cannot stand. What my city thinks is great, I think is appalling. What my city leaders rejoice in, I grieve over. But it doesn’t matter, I agree with God that the leaders of my city are the apple of God’s eye. In other words, I love them. To love a city, or to love a person does not mean that I can’t vote against their ideas or speak out against them when it is appropriate. But surely our “fight” against evil is more than a vote every couple of years. We can vote, and revolt against evil, every single day by how we choose to live our lives. If you want to “vote for life,” don’t just do it every 2-4 years, do it every single day by improving someone else’s life in practical ways. How can you call yourself “pro-life” and not give a crap about the homeless dude you pass every day? This is one way we fight against evil – revolt against dehumanizing patterns of behavior in our society. This is also how we love according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ (you could say that Jesus’ love is a “revolting love”).

If it has flesh and blood it is not our enemy. If it is human we fight for it, not against it. Since when do we have to agree with someone in order to love them? I’m glad Jesus didn’t love me that way.

Something to ink about…

A Quiet Place: living Biblical faith in my City

Silence is survival. Don’t make a sound. Those who have survived live by one rule: never make a sound

This is what it feels like sometimes being a Christ-follower in my city. If you make noise, you’re in deep trouble. If you decide to have the worldview that God is the Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer and Restorer of creation; and if you decide to believe that God is a relational God whose being and actions are characterized by love, communication and peace; and if you verbalize your convictions because you believe the Bible is God’s inspired Word to be obeyed as a rule of faith and living, then you might just awaken the anger of those who don’t agree with you. And so, many Christ-followers, and many churches, choose to live in silence in order to survive.

But the John Krasinski box-office thriller is not just about fear of monsters and how to avoid extinction. It’s about life. It’s about a family’s struggle to not just survive, but to grow. And so this blog is not just about the challenge of being a Christ-follower in my City, but it’s about life, growth and an understanding that, much like Regan’s hearing aids, the church already possesses what it needs to overcome any obstacle.

Let me say clearly that I do not blame my City for the woes of the Church. We brought that on ourselves.  A scene from my favorite movie The Mission illustrates my point. At the end of the movie, after all the death and destruction “in the name of God,” Hontar says “We must work in the world, your eminence. The world is thus.” To which Altamirano replied, “No, Senor Hontar. Thus we have made the world…thus I have made it.” If the Church in my City wants to privilege of being heard again, and being respected, it will have to earn it by speaking the truth in love with compassion, conviction and courage.

So, about the noise we make. We have to learn how to make noise, and what to make noise about, otherwise we will never survive. Most of the time the noise of what we often say is not worth being heard. Like Beau, we will be victims of irresponsible noise-making (kind of like the October street-preachers in my City). There are definitely right and wrongs ways to make noise.

Wrong way – without respect, without compassion, without intelligence                          Wrong way – if you are going to be offended when people voice their disagreement with you; or if you are unable to dialogue without getting angry or defensive                Wrong way – if you think you are right 100% of the time; or if you are unable admit that you might be wrong                                                                                                                Wrong way – through social media, posting “I love Jesus” on Facebook is not going to convince anyone about the truth of the Gospel                                                                        Right way – face to face, a real relationship based on respect and honesty                        Right way – humility, honesty and intelligence                                                                          Right way – don’t expect a post-Christian society to agree with you if you’re going to offer up Christian values

What is our message? And why are we so scared to share it publicly? Our message, ironically enough, is all the stuff people are hungry for: love, peace, justice, community, family, generosity, compassion, inclusion, healing, hope, relevance, worth, forgiveness, safety, creativity, invention, learning, equality, purpose for this life and meaning for the after-life. Who doesn’t want that? We can engage science, the arts, humanitarianism, politics, economics, religion, sports and education with the Good News contained in the Bible – IF we do it with openness, integrity, intelligence and humility. There’s no reason we should be quiet about what we believe, even in the market place of today’s culture.

If our message is so positive, then why are some people so turned off by it? Why are people so against it? Why does the Church in my City live in silence in order to survive? First, because we have not presented our message in meaningful, loving, intelligent, creative ways. Second, we have corrupted the pure message of the Gospel with our own ideas. One example is how we present salvation as simply a way to “avoid the hell that God will send us to because He’s very angry with us.” The truth is that salvation is about being restored to true humanity so that we can fulfill God’s loving purpose for us here on earth. Third, the Bible has a definite morality that comes with it. To be precise, the Bible speaks of righteousness and sin. Sin is fun, sin is enjoyable. However, sin is also destructive to individuals and society and therefore God empowers us to conquer our sins with the power that He gives us through Christ. When confronted with one’s sinfulness (all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory), it’s not comfortable. Everyone gets defensive to some point when told they are doing something wrong. And this takes me full circle: instead of the Church’s noise focusing on what people are doing wrong, why can’t we focus on what people are doing right? It is GOOD NEWS after all.

I know that when some people in my City read this blog they will think that I am discriminating, hating and part of the problem. Because I believe that gender is a gift that God gives each person and not something to be chosen, let alone left up to a child to decide, I will be criticized. But that’s ok. I still choose not to live in silence. And because I believe that God’s ideal for marriage is a man and woman, I will be criticized. But that’s ok, I won’t let it silence my witness to my loving God. And because I believe that there is a real being called satan, and real things called demons, and because I believe they (not God) are the real reason behind all the pain and suffering in this world, I know that I will be shunned by some in my City. But that’s ok, I still decide not to live in silence. Why? Because my faith is not defined by how it disagrees with modern pop culture, but it is defined by a loving God who is still working in people’s lives. My faith is defined by its object: Jesus Christ. Jesus is a bridge builder, a life giver, a problem solver, a peace maker, a game changer. He restores broken things and finds beauty in everything and everyone. That’s why the Church needs to have a voice and not live in silence.

So if you’re out there and you feel like you have to live in a quiet place because of your faith in God, let me encourage you to have a voice. yes, we will be seen as narrow-minded. Our message will not be understood, it may not even be appreciated. We will be criticized, insulted and persecuted. There’s nothing we can do about that. Let’s still choose to live out loud, to love everyone, to be great neighbors, to pray for our City, to help the many good causes our City strives for, to speak intelligently to contemporary issues and to devote ourselves to making the Name of Jesus famous for all the right reasons.

Just as Lee and Evelyn had a tough choice to make when they found out they were pregnant, so they Church has a tough decision to make. And just as they chose to do their best to create life, despite the dangers a crying baby would bring to the family, so every Christ follower needs to do their best to create life in our City. We have to break out of our fear to make noise. Let’s just be faithful and courageous, and see what God can do. Silence is not survival.

Something to ink about….

Self-inflicted Suffering

A good deal of the suffering we endure comes from bad decisions we make, and the inevitable digging ourselves of of holes. How can we prevent self-inflicted suffering? What can we do while we are suffering?

1. Learn to self-correct. How early can you catch yourself in a bad decision? What mechanisms do you have in place to correct bad decisions? Can you self-examine in humility and truth?
2. Learn how to suffer. Suffering will change you; will it be for better of worse? That choice is up to you.
3. Learn to lead yourself to Christ. We can’t keep getting lost in the wilderness as we suffer. We can’t wallow is misery. Christ is our refuge and we need to be able to find our way to Him and not constantly need other people to lead us to Him.

Something to ink about….

Love? wins

In my city, which is awesome by the way, there is a strong current of social activism which manifests in many ways. One of those outlets is the whole notion of “love wins,” “love over hate,” “all we need is love,” and “no place for hate.”

Let me say that my entire worldview revolves around the notion of love. God is love, and I love God. If I say I love God and don’t love my neighbor, then I don’t love God. I can be the most religious person in all the world but if I don’t have love, then it’s all pretty worthless. So yes, I buy into the whole concept of love. The greatest display of love mankind has ever seen is Jesus Christ willingly being nailed to a cross to erase the transgressions of humanity. I’m a believer. I’m a believer in love.

Yet, the above mentioned slogans sometimes leave me wondering. How is love being defined? What is the “hate” they are referring to? What if I don’t agree with their political agenda, am I “a hater?” I offer a few brief thoughts on these questions.

Basically, I define love as living an other orientated life, or giving of myself to improve someone else’s life. I do not define love as “I accept you and your actions without discrimination, without judgment, without accountability and regardless of the moral outcome of your actions.” To understand love I look to the cross of Christ and I heed His words about loving your friends, neighbors and enemies. “This radical call to self-sacrificial, other-orientated, cross-like agape love constitutes the core of Jesus’s vision for the kingdom of God” (Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, 176).  Too often, love is confused with moral relativism.

It’s popular to say “love is all you need,” because, after all, “love wins.” When I look at the cross of Christ I do believe love wins. When I look at a “love = anything goes” culture, I do not believe love is all we need. If love means I have to accept every person, every action, every lifestyle, every opinion regardless of any sense of right and wrong, regardless of the consequences, rregardless of any thought for future generations, then I do not believe love wins. Because, that’s not love, that, ironically enough, is indifference.

Ask any parent, ask any spouse, ask anyone in love  within a healthy relationship, “does your idea of love come with boundaries, does it come with right and wrong, does it come with expectations of trust, does it come with accountability, does it come with consequences?” and they will answer yes.

Love is the greatest gift God has given humans. It is love that defines God himself. But the love that people need is worlds apart from the love that is being given in today’s culture.

Something to ink about…

1,070 reasons why I love my church

Today, my church of 85 people raised $1,070.00 for the homeless and hungry in our city – Salem, MA. I love my church for that. But I also love the way we raised that money. Every Tuesday in the month of October we fasted. We gave up things we like to eat, things we like to drink, things we like to do and saved that money for an offering we received today. I think that’s awesome, and biblical (see Isaiah 58). 

In a day and age where local churches receive so much negative criticism, I can confidently say that I love my church. We are not perfect, nor do we try to be. We do not want to be the best church IN Salem, we want to be the best church FOR Salem. Many people are cynical of evangelical churches, sometimes deservedly so. But there are many fantastic churches out there and I am proud to say that the church I belong to is one of them.

We had a beautiful service today with music, preaching, prayer, kids activities, mission and community. But my favorite part of the service was to 1,070 reasons why I love my tribe, my church. Authentic, biblical community is powerful. I am grateful to be a part of one.

Magic, the Gathering

Every Monday afternoon, me and a few of my friends get together at a local Comic & Collectibles store to play some Magic, the Gathering. For those who don’t know this is a trading card game first introduced in 1993. I play for two main reasons: 1) it’s fun, 2) it’s a great way to meet people I would otherwise never have an opportunity to meet.The reason for this blog is not to defend or promote the playing of MtG, but to explore a few observations about social interaction and to remind us that God has created us to be social beings.

I don’t want to take the time to write, nor do you want to take the time to read, everything I’ve learned about social interaction, so I’ll just talk about what I’ve learned on Mondays with the guys.

1. People don’t like to hang around with jerks. Pretty profound, right? But it’s so true. Even gamers, who tend to be a little socially awkward (including myself), recognize someone who is immature, insecure and selfish and reject them. I think we ALL have a little bit of “jerk” in us. As we go on in life, the question is: are we trying to improve, become less “jerky?” If people don’t like to be around you, have you ever asked yourself how come? Are you improving your character? My perspective is that the best way to do this is through a relationship with God based on the grace that is ours in Christ.
2. Remember the TV show “Cheers?” You know, “where everybody knows your name.” There is tremendous power and safety in social groups where everybody knows your name. Even if the relationships are somewhat shallow and surface, it’s nice to be known, to be recognized and welcomed.Perhaps the greatest grace you can show someone is to welcome them, include them and…remember their name! Are you “on the outside?” Do you know someone who is on the fringe and not accepted by anyone? What will you do about it?
3. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, people just want to be known. As we gather on Mondays, MtG is what we play, but in the long run it’s not about the card game (true, for some people it’s ONLY about winning the card game…see #1 above). What it’s about, I believe, is a way for us to connect with other people. Guys would never admit this, but the truth is that we all want to be known and know other people. This is a profound truth and one that is often overlooked or downplayed. I sometimes forget this myself and make the gathering about a competition instead of a community. Community, by the way, reflects the very nature and heart of God.

Let me close with a few tips for people:

• don’t be a know-it-all
• ask questions, don’t always talk about yourself
• win, and lose, graciously
• don’t constantly put people down, even in fun. People have their limits.
• enjoy fun as fun, don’t make everything so competitive
• immaturity is difficult to be around…grow up
• friendship takes time and effort but is worth the investment
  

  sadly, wrath if the first thing that comes to mind when people think about God.

You were created by a God who lives in community (the Trinity) and therefor you are “wired” to live in community. We all crave it, but seldom experience it. Truly, the card game got it right,  there is magic in the gathering. Powerful things can happen when people gather together. Miraculous things can happen when we gather together in the name God.

Something to ink about