Life . . . Today

My friend Wade Hodges made a big announcement today. You can read about his courage to hear God's call on his life by clicking here. Wade--you have lots of people who believe in the ways God's gifted you. Count the yes votes, and don't worry about the naysayers.

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Our small group is reading Sex God right now. I read the book when it first came out a few years back. I think it's a fantastic work about the "endless connections of sexuality and spirituality." If you have not read it, you'll love it. I know few folks who read Bell and fail to learn a great deal about the collision of scripture and life as we know it.

I particularly appreciate Bell's dichotomy of the temptation to be an angel (soul with no body) and animal (body with no soul) in light of God's work of creating humanity (body and soul). While I wish Bell would've at least footnoted C.S. Lewis (the 20th century "catalyst" for this anthropological distinction), I think Bell's right on. While many Christians bemoan the "animal" messages of our culture (What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas), the church offers an equally toxic one. Instead of talking about the possibilities of being human, we settle for stuffing sexuality and spirituality deep inside.

I also love this line from Bell. "Lust makes a promise it can't deliver on."

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One of our students at Rochester College (and dear family member at Rochester Church) lost her stepmother in a car accident. Sara (pronounced Sarr-ah) Ageno is from Jinja, Uganda. When she was a young girl, her biological parents were both killed in a similar motor vehicle accident. Another family from her local church took her in. Now, her second mom's life has been taken. Pray for Sara. Pray for peace. Pray for mourning. Pray for her to ask big questions. Pray for her to take those big questions to God.

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I preached from Jacob's prayer in Genesis 32 today. It's a remarkable prayer really. Walter Brueggemann says it is the only real full prayer in all of Torah. The thing that blows me away about this prayer is not that Jacob has the chutzpah to pray it (compared to some other stuff this is actually pretty mild). The thing that blows me away is that God goes along with this con-man, huckster. It seems God would rather work with a shady somebody than a pious pretender. I needed to hear that today. Because, before I'm a minister, I'm first a follower.