To be fully alive is not simply to drink deeply of life and to be satisfied. It’s to become a well, offering Life to the world around you. That is what it means to be fully alive. It is not only to experience a glimpse of God for yourself but also to become a glimpse of God and to create communities that are glimpses of God.
Excerpted from Spark by Jason Jaggard
Daily Reflection: In what specific way can you become a well for your family and friends?
Hattie covered her mouth, but the giggle escaped anyway. Boney Hughes lay under her kitchen sink, his upper body concealed by the cupboard. His legs sprawled over her linoleum flooring.
Boney scooted out from under the sink and peered up at her. ‘You think me rappin’ my old knuckles on these leaky pipes is funny?’
Unable to stifle her amusement, Hattie nodded. ‘You look like a . . .’ She fanned herself, trying to regain her composure while he stood. ‘Like a fish out of water.’
Boney’s winter-white eyebrows arched. ‘A big old river catfish?’
Giggling, she studied him from his wiry beard to his worn boots. ‘A smaller fish perhaps, but surely one with a big heart.’”
The proprietor of Miss Hattie’s boardinghouse and Mr. Boney understand the gift of a merry heart.
[ … ]
What does God want from you and me? Does God want us to think the right thoughts or to do the right things? Of course. But above all God wants us to be involved in right relationships. When the Bible says, “God is love,” it is saying that God is a relationship. Love has no value or meaning in a vacuum. Right relationships are not produced by right thoughts or right actions. Just the opposite. Right thoughts and right actions are produced by right relationships.
Excerpted from Real Church in a Social Network World by Leonard Sweet
Daily Reflection:
What changes do you need to make in your relationships (with others and with God) to create relationships that foster the right actions and thoughts?
There was the Philippian jailer in Acts 16:2734. God could have reached him without human help. Instead, He allowed Paul and Silas to be incarcerated in his jail. From these two prisoners, the jailer heard the gospel, and he and his family came to faith. I think also of Cornelius in Acts 10, a centurion searching for God. An angel told him he needed to meet someone named Simon Peter, and the angel explained where to find him. Interesting. The angel could have given him the gospel. Instead God chose to use Simon Peter. And what about Saul (later the apostle Paul) in Acts 9? While it’s true he was converted through an encounter with Christ Himself on the Damascus Road, God sent Ananias to confirm this with Saul and to pray for him to receive the power of the [ … ]
For you, the call is literally within your grasp. It’s the place you show up each day and the problems you encounter in the process. Possibly for you, it’s putting a dent in the never- ending cycle of poverty that destroys so many lives, neighborhoods, and nations. Or creatively addressing the malnutrition, poor health, and disease that’s wrecking so many families. Or tutoring, mentoring, and fostering fatherless children. Perhaps the addiction to drugs, alcohol, career advancement, affluence, or pornography is what enslaves and torments your friends the most. What ever it is that’s broken, whatever you see wrong, remember God’s intention and method of restoration is to use you to bring his redeeming love to the world.
This is the “power of the ought” at work the way restoration living begins to flood and transform our entire cosmos. [ … ]
Sometimes I fear we are like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Throughout the entire story, Rhett Butler tried to win her heart, but Scarlett was smitten by the milquetoast Ashley Wilkes. Finally, as the story comes to a close, Rhett walks away in frustration. “I feel sorry for you, Scarlett,” he declares. “You are throwing away love with both hands and grabbing for that which will never love you.” As I watched the movie, I kept thinking, Doesn’t she see how much Rhett really loves her? He’d move heaven and earth to please her, if she would but let him. Why is she going after someone who would never make her truly happy? And we are Scarlett, ignoring the only one who can make us truly happy and chasing after figments of our imagination things that will never make [ … ]
Now, if it is true that we’re saved by grace, then it’s important to ask ourselves: Can we define it? And if it is true, as I suppose, that no unconverted person can tell me what it is, I think it would be important to you to make sure you can define it.
Think for a moment. Grace is _______. What? Your answer to that question may reveal where you really stand with God.
Did you answer it? Do you know what this marvelous term means?
We may be able to define it some way, but one thing is certain: We can never comprehend it, because it plumbs the profoundest depths of human thought. It scales the dizziest heights of divine revelation. And though we may get a hold of a little corner of it, we can never fully comprehend [ … ]
Guilt says, “I owe you.” Guilt is the result of having done something we perceived as wrong. Every wrong we do can be restated as an act of theft, as we’ll see in a moment. If I steal from you, I owe you. So the message from a heart laden with guilt is, “I owe!”
For example, consider the man who runs off with another woman and abandons his family. Without realizing it at the time, he has stolen something from every member of his family. He has stolen his wife’s first marriage; he has robbed her of her future, her financial security, her reputation as a wife. From his children’s perspective this man has stolen their father and all that a father means to the home. He has robbed them of Christmas, traditions, emotional and financial security, [ … ]
He could have come back when crosses were out of style.
But his heart wouldn’t let him. If there was hesitation on the part of his humanity, it was overcome by the compassion of his divinity. His divinity heard the voices. His divinity heard the hopeless cries of the poor, the bitter accusations of the abandoned, the dangling despair of those who are trying to save themselves.
And his divinity saw the faces. Some wrinkled. Some weeping. Some hidden behind veils. Some obscured by fear. Some earnest with searching. Some blank with boredom. From the face of Adam to the face of the infant born somewhere in the world as you read these words, he saw them all.
And you can be sure of one thing. Among the voices that found their way into that carpentry shop in Nazareth [ … ]
by Susan Meissner
Author, The Girl in the Glass
Anytime I chat with someone who has just returned from a trip to Italy, the first question I always ask is, Did you go to Florence?
And if they say yes, then I ask them if they saw the David. Not the stony imposter that sits in the sun-and-statue-drenched piazza of the Palazzo Vecchio. Did they see the real deal. Michelangelos David. The one that stands on the tiled floor of the library-quiet Accademia. The one that takes your breath away. Did they see that one?
If they say no, they ran out of time, or no, they didnt want to wait in line, or and this is the worst theyre happy with the photo they got of the copy in the piazza, I experience a little inner crisis. [ … ]
