Canada

We had a great weekend in Canada attending the wedding of friends, Dan and Mira, as well as getting to spend time with our daughter Gayle. The weekend included some good rest, good food, and great conversations. For those of you who traverse the border from time to time a happy moment came in a quick border crossing in spite of the fact that it was Canadian Thanksgiving.

Times of Refreshing

I think that one of the greatest or at least most appealing lines in the Bible is in Acts 3 where Peter calls people to repent so that "times of refreshing may come". Who doesn't want to have times that are refreshing. It makes you think of diving into a cool pool on a hot summer's day or drinking that great cold drink after a hard run--refreshing. What I'm not sure I caught before is that the refreshing has at least two parts to it. First comes repentance which brings about a blotting out of our sins--refreshing! Next comes a refreshing new life by listening to and following the words of Jesus. Peter in this masterful message connects Jesus to Moses and the prophet that Moses said would be coming that the people were to listen to him (check out that at the transfiguration 9.35 that the Father makes this same connection when he tells us to "listen to him" i.e. Jesus). The cool thing is that when Peter uses this reference from Deuteronomy 18.15-19 is that he connects Jesus with the teachings of the Torah and the giving of the law on Sinai. Here's what it says in Dt. 18 15 "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— 16just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, 'Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.' 17And the LORD said to me, 'They are right in what they have spoken. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him."
In making this connection Peter wants us to see that Jesus is the new Torah or God's new word to his people telling them how to live. Following that path brings times of refreshing, ignoring the path means being cut off from the refreshing that Jesus' teaching brings. Of course, for al of us this has a struggle to it--we actually have to believe (which means both saying with our mouths and doing with our lives) that Jesus' teaching is the way to a refreshing life. The second part of the struggle is to spend enough time studying the teaching of Jesus to discover that refreshing life. I know that I'm not alway in either of those places.

A family update

It's been quite a summer and fall for our family. You can check out the summer struggles by looking at those posts. For our fall deal we found out 2 weeks ago that Linda, my wife, has breast cancer. Her surgery last week went well--sort of. The good news out of the surgery is that there is no cancer in the lymph nods. The bad news is that somehow the main point of the surgery --to remove the cancerous lump--was totally missed. Yes, they took out only healthy tissue and missed the lump. How is this possible you ask, no one has a really good explanation--just theories. The bottom line was, "This has never happened before". While we like to break new ground, this is not one of the ways we want to do it. Linda's repeat surgery is scheduled for October 11. We are trying to find ways to assure there is not another "miss".

On a happier note, we are heading to Canada this weekend for a wedding of two great people, Dan and Mira. The added bonus is that Gayle will be flying in from Seattle for the wedding so we get to spend a couple of days with Gayle and Rob. I'll try to take some pics and put them up next week.

Just wondering

I started reading the book of Acts today and noticed something in the footnote of my esv Bible version, namely, that when it talks about Jesus' brothers being in the upper room praying (Acts 1.14) that the Greek word can mean and most likely in this case does mean siblings. So Jesus' brothers and sisters are in the upper room praying. In verse 15 when Peter stands up among the brothers the same words is used--so the crowd he addresses and calls brothers is actually a mixed crew of men and women. All of this reminds me of the radically inclusive nature of Jesus' ministry where both men and women can be and in fact are disciples (see Luke 8). Along with this come the words of Acts 2.41 where we are told about 3000 are added to the Christian community on that first day of Pentecost--unlike the distinction when Jesus feeds the 5000 where we are told that there are 5000 men besides women and children, here we find a unity. It seems as we move into the book of Acts the separation between men and women disciples is being broken down and now there is just one group--followers of Jesus (see Galatians 3.28).

Along with this I also wondered about another group -- kids. It is interesting how few times we find children central to the story in both the gospels and Acts, not to mention the epistles. Are they part of the 3000 counted in Acts 2? I wonder if the lack of children being mentioned connects with the OT idea (Dt. 6) that children are taught by their parents and the covenant community so that the adults learn and become disciples by being with the Apostles and then they carry this not only to the world, but also to their children. Children are not mentioned very often because they are second in line in receiving the message and Acts is about those who are first in line. Not sure if this is right, but I was just wondering.

Reading Thoughts

I'm making my way through 1 Kings and the gospel of John right now. I noticed a couple of things this morning.

First, in the book of Kings I'm at the point of the confrontation between Elijah and Ahab. After three years of drought they meet up and Ahab calls Elijah the "troubler of Israel" because Elijah is the one who has prayed for drought to be on the land. The truth, as Elijah points out, is that its Ahab whose caused the trouble. As I heard that I couldn't help but wonder how many of us blame our troubles on someone else when we are in fact the source of them, but we refuse to see it.

In the gospel of John I'm reading the story of the Samaritan women at the well. After she leaves Jesus tells his disciples that there is a harvest that is ready that they didn't do the work for but they get to enjoy its fruits. As soon as he's done saying that we're told that many believe because the Samaritan woman tells them about Jesus. What is cool here is that the work of planting the seed of the gospel is done by a despised Samaritan and not only a Samaritan, but a Samaritan woman. It tells us about who God uses in his kingdom to spread the good news and makes us wonder when someone come to faith who actually did the work, while we get to enjoy the fruit.

Sunday's New Services

Just wanted to give all the egm folks an update on Sunday. We started our new Sunday schedule. It went pretty well. The study together time at 4.45 had about 100 people in attendance. Our "God's Celebrations" class had about 60 parents and kids. Our middle school gathering had around 40 kids plus leaders. The evening "repeat" service had 140 people, a decent crowd for our first night out. For those of you who missed the coffee Sunday night be assured it will be appearing next week.

Our morning services were somewhat less full than last spring, so we are making more seats available. In addition we had at least two new families visiting our Sunday evening service.

Thanks to all who are making this shift a success. We continue to pray and look to see where God may be leading in this time at EverGreen.

Finally a new post

I've been doing reading in the gospel of John and found something I hadn't noticed before. When Jesus is talking to Nicodemus in John 3 and says, "you must be born again" the "you" is plural. It is "ya all" must be born again. Since Jesus is talking to just Nicodemus here it is really interesting that he speaks the plural you. Who are the rest of the people he is talking about? Is it the rest of the Jewish leadership (Nick comes from the leadership council), is it the Jewish people? Whoever the rest of the folks are, the plural "you" puts a different emphasis on the whole being born again deal. Jesus' picture of being born again suddenly becomes much more of a community and family picture, a picture of being born again with brothers and sisters rather than just being out on our own. It seems that right from the get go we are part of a family. One might even think in terms of triplets or quints who are born at one time and the closeness of that which goes beyond just being children who all come from the same mother.

So what do you think of all of this? Does it change the way we look at reaching out to people and calling them to be born again? Click on the button and give me a response.

On another deal. I'm working on Daniel 3 (story of the three who are thrown into the fiery furnace) which for the longest time I saw as a very serious story. Imagine my surprise when using a Jewish resource it was pointed out that the story is loaded with humor (much like the book of Esther is hugely serious in topic but overflows with humor). If you want to see more on this one the passage is looked at in this week's "getting dusty". You can download it after 3 p.m. today at www.egm.org -- go to downloads and check out daily listings.