With great sadness I see it all come crashing down

So I have a flare for dramatic titles sometimes...

I've been reading "I Love You is Back" by Derrick C Brown. He's a damn fine poet. I enjoy is writings, I love his music, his spoken word makes me laugh and think.

My brother works at a local coffee shop and I found out tonight he know has a drink named after him (if you ever go to the Music Cafe order a Bobby Latte). I had one for the first time tonight. It was awesome. My second favorite (or possibly third) favorite coffee drink. The Hazelnut Latte at Ebenezers is still boss.

While enjoying some conversation with a friend and writing some poetry I watched the Power Puff Girls Movie. Despite what your current state of laughing The Power Puff Girls are awesome.

Word

"But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die."

Galatians 2:17-21

Seeing You Off The Edges

So I have a couple things to say tonight. The first is my gut reaction and some reflection to a sign I saw today. There's a church on Old Georgetown road as you're coming into downtown Bethesda that always has something on it's sign out front that makes me laugh. And honestly I don't take too much of it seriously because it's always something that seems to me be nonsense. But today it caught my attention. Today it read "The church is a hospital to the sinner, not a resting place for the saints". Simple and to the point. And my first response was something to the effect of "those bastards". It's sad that I went there and here's my initial thought behind this; that the church is there for those who need Jesus. Let me defend myself. I'm not saying people don't need Jesus and I'm not saying that church shouldn't be a place where people can come to the Lord but... I feel there is a large portion of churches that have made the church a place where people come to the Lord and not a place where Christ followers come to get feed and encouraged. I think we often let the church do the job of getting people saved and not having people get people saved. I always go back to Acts where the people got saved and then came into the church. Not came into the church and got saved.

But that's not really the point. I actually reread this a couple of times and thought about it. And actually... I agree. I think it's really sad that I went to the sinner as the unsaved and it's unfair. Because I spend most of my day sinning. As a Christ follower I sin just as much as someone who's not. And all sin is equal in God's eye. So just because I'm not sleeping with my girlfriend doesn't mean I've gotten off free for the day because I did look at that girl on the street lustfully. No one's a saint. We're to strive to be like Jesus, to achieve perfection but we all fall short of the glory of God. And so I like the idea that it's a place for sinners. People who want to get better.


Second idea of the day has to do with the way God works. Which I must say frustrates me from time to time. In a nut shell, God had answered a prayer he'd put on my heart many years previous to the answer. The answer came in the form of a friendship and relationship built on the desire to be more honest in our walks with God and a desire to learn more about him. This relationship has been in limbo for many months now and it was very frustrating to me why, because I couldn't figure it out. But I had finally made peace with it and put the situation behind me and was looking forward... until tonight. I read this verse.

"Now I am coming to you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you. I don’t want what you have—I want you. After all, children don’t provide for their parents. Rather, parents provide for their children. I will gladly spend myself and all I have for you, even though it seems that the more I love you, the less you love me." (2 Corinthians 12:14-15)

It instantaniously brought me back to this relationship which I had thought I'd put behind me. Sometimes God isn't ready for us to let things go... and sometimes I have to ask why?

Mono

Hope Springs Eternal

Don Miller is my favorite writer. He has two books that I highly, highly recommend, "Blue Like Jazz" and Searching for God KNows What". Great books. Don speaks at Imago Dei Community Church in Portland, Oregon from time to time. Don completely honest and real when he speaks and next time he comes remotely close to the DC area I'm going to see him.

http://api.monkcms.com/Clients/download.php?sid=7&url=http://www.imagodeicommunity.com/ekkmedia/our-hope-in-the-eternal-glory-of-god.mp3&mediaBID=68648

Tonight, Lets All Make Love in London

There are moments when God wants you to do something that doesn't make sense. He speaks to our lives like the parables in the Gospels. They seem to get right to the point like we'd like them to but when you think about it things make sense. I really struggled trying to figure out why I was supposed to change my eating habits in such a big way. It didn't make sense but it felt right, like I was supposed to do it. And then it struck me that it was a discipline issue. I'm not the most disciplined person in the world and I think this was a way to get me to think about my choices and discipline myself in one area to help be more disciplined in others. It's weird and it's been tough but I'm going to stick with it.

Dear Metro Rail

So I want to file a complaint to whomever is in charge of the DC Metro Rail system. Please take note. I am not one to complain about public transportation because I love it and not having to drive in the city is great. But we have a problem. I understand inflation happens and prices have to go up with the changing economy, I got that. But rider ship can't be hurting that bad can it? I mean you are how people get to and from basketball and hockey games. You will be the method of travel to the new baseball stadium. A large group of people even take the train to the football games. To maintain quality of service as a reason for raising your prices is a pretty bad excuse. And here's why I say this... it took me an hour to go from Shady Grove to White Flint. An HOUR! That's only a 10 minute drive. It's normally a 10 minute train ride. 1 HOUR! Thankfully Jer parked at Friendship Heights and I didn't have to go through the construction on the way home. I lost my mind today and decided to try and take a chance on Metro again... and there's a Capitals game. You know it's a bad idea when you get on the train and it's completely full at Shady Grove. The price to ride is increased, the price to park is increased and you're doing construction every week causing major delays! This is not working for me. Our relationship might soon be coming to an end and that saddens me deeply. But let's try and get it together. This doesn't have to end. Get your shit together. Make the price of riding worth it to the customer.

BP