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.