“Watch out! Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”

Jesus of Nazareth, The Christ. (As recorded by John Mark, Peter’s companion)

Who do you spend your time with?

Why is it, when we talk about ways of “meeting ‘the lost’” do we always conceive of awkward, unnatural, forced interactions that require “faith” (more like, a complete lack of social tact, or extreme guts…) in order to engage in?

Who do you sit next to in class?

What is your next door neighbor’s name and what do they do for a living?

What is the name of the person next to you in your place of work and what do they do for fun? When was the last time you went with them when they did that?

Why don’t you know the answers to these questions?

Have we created such a culture of “community” and “fellowship” that we have no more time for relationships with people who aren’t in our immediate circle of fellow believers?

What would it take for you to have time to spend with your classmates, neighbors, and coworkers, on their turf? What activities do you need to cease involvement with?

Do it.

Mark Kelly, the News and Editorial Director for Saddleback Church (Rick Warren’s Church) is trying to start up a network of Christian bloggers. A lot of people were asked to complete a survey about how Christians are using their blogs for “ministry purposes” etc, it yielded some interesting (thought maybe not scientific) results. After the jump is a list of Web sites of folks who participated, if you are interested.

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This post is exceptionally long, and you probably won’t read it all. But it’s from my heart, and I hope you’ll take time to consider reading it.

Tonight as I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner (something I do only once in a blue moon) and keeping an eye on Elena while Nancy was getting ready to head out to some meetings, I had a profound realization. I love my daughter. I love her almost as much as I love my wife.

She was playing in her playpen and had tipped over sideways in a wonderfully contorted position that only an aspiring gymnast could accomplish. She is not yet strong enough to right herself, and she was laying uncomfortably over several toys and struggling to get up. This is a position she finds herself in quite frequently. Sometimes she manages to make her way onto her stomach (not much more comfortable). Always she ends up whining for help. I smile at this whine (so far, she’s only 8 months old). Never yet has it been annoying to me. This is when I realized I love her.

I walk over and tenderly sit her back upright she goes back to playing without much acknowledging my assistance. A minute later, we repeat the process. These sort of things go on throughout the day. She must be hand-fed. She poops and pees all over herself and we must change her diapers. Soon she’ll be disobeying and we will have to discipline her, which I’m really not looking forward to.

All of this however reminds me how much I love her. These little inconveniences do not annoy me, or make me frustrated at her. Then again, I don’t have to put up with it nearly as much as Nancy does, so maybe I don’t have enough credibility yet to make this next assertion.

This must be fairly close to exactly the way God feels about us, only with him it is to the nth degree. He loves us perfectly and always will. We are like children in his eyes and his love for us is much the same (deeper still) as (than) a parent’s love for their child. Unconditional. Unbreakable. Unfailing. Relentless. Perfect.

This analogy goes very deep, very wide, very high, doesn’t break down very easily. I believe the order of things was created this way. Just as a husband’s relationship with his wife gives us a picture of Jesus’ relationship to the Church, so a parent’s relationship to a child gives us a picture of God’s love for his children. This analogy, as immense as it may be, however, has several strange twists. The first one:

Not all of us are God’s children.

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Preach it, brother!!!!

When a church (or Christian organization, or Christian designer) takes existing art and media, makes poor parodies of it (that they probably made in a few days because refuse to plan well), and then distributes it under the guise of creativity it completely devalues the work and skills of the artists and craftsmen responsible for the inspiration. Worse, it just makes followers of Christ look BAD, which in turn makes Christ look bad, uncreative, and irrelevant. And then we wonder why there aren’t more artists in the church.

This is amazing.

Thunderous applause.

[tags]David Crowder Band, Ted Nugent, Rock and Roll[/tags]