From relevantmagazine.com

It’s 11:30 p.m., and you are sitting on the floor doing sit-ups. The TV in your hotel room is playing in the background with some random show that is not interesting enough to make you watch. Your laptop computer is opened, and a video of a Shane and Shane concert starts to play, entertaining you while you lose some of that belly all those late night French breads have made.

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From relevantmagazine.com

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I like attending ladies salad luncheons. Maybe it’s just a Midwestern craving of mine that brings back memories of when Mom would dress us girls up and take us to the ladies-only, mother-daughter salad supper at church. Maybe it’s the hope for as much three bean salad that I can handle. Regardless, salad suppers draw me in, call my name and then strap me to a fellowship hall chair for a solid two hours.

This particular evening started off innocently enough, with a buffet of salads in porcelain bowls, a room full of women’s voices and a promise of a speaker with an intriguing international experience.

By the evening’s end, though, I just wanted to leave the religiosity-laden experienced behind me. The final skit put one more check beside my “why the Church frustrates me” list and left me with a pain in my gut superceding the indigestion caused by my beloved three-bean salad.

The skit’s premise lay on evangelism, something I wholly agree with. Sure, we should share our faith with other people. How else will they know about Jesus except by seeing Him in us and hearing about Him from us. But the skit had a major flaw that still eats at my gut.

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Grabbed from calebobo’s xanga:

THE WAR FOR CHINA’S SOUL

–The Christians surely knew they were testing the patience of local government officials, who insisted the building was illegal and had to be torn down. But few were prepared for what happened next. Witnesses told TIME that at about 2:30 p.m., thousands of uniformed police and plainclothes security officers appeared at the construction site. The police cleared a way through the crowds for a few drill-equipped backhoes, and the authorities then demolished the church. Witnesses say police bludgeoned people indiscriminately with nightsticks. “They were picking up women–some of them old ladies–by their hair and swinging them around like dolls, then letting them crash to the ground,” says a man who watched the clash from across the street. A statement faxed to TIME by the information office of the Xiaoshan district government describes the scene differently, claiming that about 100 Christians “attacked and injured government officials” and that although the police detained a few protesters, none were injured. But the volunteer interviewed by TIME produced receipts from the local hospital attesting to his treatment for broken ribs, which he says many others suffered as well. “They treated us like dead dogs,” he says. “Some of them scoffed at us as we lay there, saying, ‘Where is your God now? Why can’t he help you? If you want to go to heaven, we’ll help you get there right now.’”

We yearn for Your love, that spiritual high,
Hoping to be accepted at the gates when we die.

But often at times, when we feel so lost,
We forget about Your sacrifice, and how much it cost.

You see us struggling, stuck down in the dirt.
And we keep on failing, as You continue to hurt.

Our focus constantly shifted, to the things we want to do.
Not doing the things which we should be doing for You.

But we deserve nothing, and You deserve all.
Yet we ignore this, and continue to fall.

How far is the drop? Only You can tell.
But if not for You, it still might be Hell.

And yet You forgive us, by giving your own blood.
Lending us a hand, as we’re dragged out of the mud.

So thank You father, for Your love and Your grace.
And maybe, someday, we can realize our own rightful place.

Found this today while surfing the web. I was gonna wait till later to post this, but felt really strongly to do it now. It follows this I think: “The second most direct way God will reach people besides actually coming to them, will be through us.”

I think this story displays the message of love and rescue and grace that Jesus came to our broken world for. Caution, it hits a somewhat intense topic. Read on.
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TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS.
by jamie tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won’t see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she’d say if her story had an audience. She smiles. “Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars.”

I would rather write her a song, because songs don’t wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

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